Emerging Therapies for Atherosclerosis

In the United States alone, about 250,000 people develop significant mitral regurgitation (MR) each year, with almost 50,000 undergoing surgery. Surgical repair of a diseased mitral valve has become the treatment of choice for patients with significant MR. Since there is no single therapeutic approach for every etiology of MR, surgical mitral valve repair includes a variety of techniques that are applied depending on the etiology and pathology of the mitral valve. One of the techniques is called edge-to-edge repair, wherein the scallops of the mitral leaflets are sutured together at the origin of the MR, leading to stabilization of the incompetent segment and the creation of a competent doubleorifice mitral valve. The success of this surgical repair technique inspired the development of the MitraClip® system, a catheter-based repair system developed by Evalve, Inc. The percutaneous procedure is performed in the catheterization laboratory under general anesthesia using fluoroscopic and transesophageal echocardiographic guidance.