An Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU) Doernbecher Children's Hospital pediatric cardiac team has made a successful breakthrough in the treatment of heart disease/defects. 

Dr. Grant Burch, M.D., associate professor of pediatric cardiology at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital and director of the OHSU Pediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiac Catheterization Lab, and Laurie Armsby, M.D., Burch's partner in the OHSU Pediatric and Adult Congenital Cardiac Catheterization Lab and associate professor of pediatric cardiology at OHSU Doernbecher Children's Hospital, have used a device to implant a pulmonary heart valve without the use of open-heart surgery.  

The device is called the Medtronic Melody Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve, and it is used to replace a leaky or narrow pulmonary valve conduit in adults and children that have already had surgery to fix a congenital heart defect. This tool was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and does not require open-heart surgery. It was first approved for commercial use in Europe in 2006, and since then, over 1,700 patients have been implanted with the pulmonary valve. Now, according to the FDA, 1,000 U.S. citizens with congenital heart disease will qualify for the Melody valve each year.

"Children born with blocked or leaky heart valves can undergo as many as four open-heart surgeries before reaching adulthood to replace conduits that have worn out or that they've outgrown, and each time the risk of surgery goes up," said Burch. "The Melody extends the useful life of an implanted valve conduit and is very likely to reduce the number of open-heart operations a patient might require over a lifetime."

The Melody is placed into a small opening in a patient's leg and is led by a catheter through blood vessels into the heart. A balloon on the end of the catheter is inflated once the valve is positioned in place, which delivers the valve and corrects blood flow. 

"The remarkable thing about this procedure is that the valve is placed into the beating heart through a vein in the patient's leg," said Armsby. "After the procedure, patients spend a night on the hospital ward and are discharged home the following morning. This device brings us closer to the goal of providing children less invasive alternatives to surgery for the treatment of congenital heart disease." 

Burch noted that the Melody valve cannot eliminate the need for open-heart surgery entirely, but it can be used as a safe alternative for those with congenital heart disease.