Repairing faulty heart valves requires gruesome surgeries that start by cracking open the chests of patients. That may soon be history, thanks to much less invasive techniques that use a stent with living tissue attached delivered with a balloon catheter or catheter delivery system. The March Machine of the Month, the HV100 from Machine Solutions Inc., Flagstaff, Ariz., (machinesolutions.org), prepares valves for placement by folding or crimping them so they deploy correctly. “Valve tissue can be up to 50-mm diameter,” says James Kasprzyk, of Machine Solutions. “And because the tissue is live, it must be crimped and loaded in a catheterization lab that's usually adjacent the operating room, and just prior to the procedure.” The procedures are in R&D phases but the HV100 has been used in live cases.

In some operations, the defective valve will be left in place because stents are strong enough to push it out of the way. The proposed procedure is much easier on patients, letting them walk much sooner than the previous method allowed.