Building on our efforts to advance transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement (TPVR) for patients with congenital heart disease, the Heart Institute’s cardiac catheterization team expanded its options with the Edwards SAPIEN XT and SAPIEN 3 (S3) transcatheter heart valves this year.

The cardiac cath lab at Cincinnati Children’s is one of only a small group of pediatric centers in the country using the S3 valve for TPVR in patients with congenital heart disease, making the Heart Institute a national destination for transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement and complementing our growing surgical program, which is already an international destination program for high-acuity and complex cases.

“The addition of the S3 valve to our transcatheter valve armamentarium allows us to treat a much larger subset of patients that require pulmonary valve replacement in the cath lab, sparing them surgery and exposure to the heart lung machine while providing excellent outcomes. We can now treat the majority of patients that require pulmonary valve replacement in the catheterization lab,” said Bryan H. Goldstein, MD, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Associate Director of Cardiac Catheterization and Intervention. “And we are one of very few programs in the U.S. to offer this technology to congenital heart patients right now.”

With the S3 valve, now even more children and adults born with Tetralogy of Fallot and related conditions can receive pulmonary valve replacements without undergoing open heart surgery.