Bloomington celebrates a new milestone in local heart care

On Tuesday, March 10, the IU Health Bloomington Cardiology team performed its first Mitraclip™ procedures, marking an important advancement in local heart care focused on a condition that affects over 2% of the population.

Mitral regurgitation—also known as a leaky heart valve—is a type of mitral valve disease where the heart’s mitral valve fails to close properly, leading to disrupted blood flow.

“Mitral valve disease is the most common form of valvular heart disease. It is often undertreated for many reasons and, if not corrected, leads to heart failure,” says Cardiologist Kevin Zawacki, MD, who performed the procedures with the support of his colleagues Cardiac Imager Mohan Shenoy, MD; Cardiologist Andrew Ferguson, MD; Cardiac Surgeon Sanjay Tripathi, MD; and Cardiac Anesthesiologist Yunwei Chen, MD.

The new-to-Bloomington procedure involves implanting a small clip device to the mitral valve, helping it close more effectively. The device helps restore normal blood flow and relieve symptoms from mitral regurgitation.

Since the procedure is a minimally invasive, non-surgical approach to repairing a damaged mitral heart valve, it is particularly beneficial for patients who are considered too high risk for open-heart surgery.

It can also be an appealing option for patients seeking a less invasive treatment option with a shorter recovery time compared to traditional open-heart surgery. This is just the latest in the cardiovascular team’s ongoing commitment to expanding advanced cardiovascular care close to home for patients across south central Indiana.

“This is a dedicated team effort that adds greatly to our full-service structural heart program at IU Health Bloomington," says Zawacki. “Our multidisciplinary structural heart team at IU Health Bloomington can now provide state-of-the-art conventional, minimally invasive, robotic, and catheter-based mitral valve surgery.”

Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK553135/

Pictured above (l-r): Cardiac Imager Mohan Shenoy, MD; Megan Monnier, NP; Cardiologist Andrew Ferguson, MD; Cardiologist Kevin Zawacki, MD; Cardiac Surgeon Sanjay Tripathi, MD; and Echocardiographer Quinn Westerhouse.