Click link below picture

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Every year, tens of thousands of people are diagnosed with heart valve disease, and of these people, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) is considered a good option for those considered to be at high risk for open-heart surgery complications. The prosthetic valves come in many sizes from different manufacturers, but if the replacement doesn’t have the proper fit, paravalvular leakage can occur when blood flows around the prosthetic, instead of through it. If the right prosthetic is used from the get-go, this complication can be avoided and patient outcomes improved. Now, researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and the Piedmont Heart Institute, which is part of Piedmont HealthCare, are trying to improve the success rate of TAVR, by using new 3D printing technologies and medical imaging to make patient-specific heart valve models that imitate the physiology of real heart valves.

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Zhen Qian, Chief of Cardiovascular Imaging Research at Piedmont Heart Institute, and Kan Wang, a researcher at Georgia Tech, at the Structural Heart Research & Innovation Laboratory, part of Emory University’s Carlyle Fraser Heart Center within the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. [Image: Rob Felt, Georgia Tech]

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Click link below for article and video:

https://3dprint.com/180090/3d-printed-heart-valve-models/

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