Charité doctors implant a heart prosthesis that is unique worldwide

At the German Heart Center at Charité (DHZC), a patient has successfully undergone a unique heart valve prosthesis made from the patient's own tissue. The center announced this in a press release .

The patient reportedly survived the procedure well. 30-year-old Marcus L., who has a congenital narrowing of a heart valve , was able to leave the hospital after just five days and return to work four weeks later. "I feel excellent," he said. The prosthesis was also successfully implanted in another patient.

The prosthesis is a valve replacement specifically for the pulmonary valve – a valve between the ventricle and the pulmonary artery. Every year, around 800 children in Germany are born with a defect in this heart valve.

Until now, the prosthetics for these valves were made from animal tissue from pigs and cattle. However, these valves have a limited durability and do not grow with the child, which is particularly disadvantageous for children with congenital pulmonary valve defects. After several years, the prosthetics must be replaced in open-heart surgery, which is a significant burden and requires long hospital stays.

To solve this problem, Boris Schmitt, a pediatrician at the German Heart Center at Charité, and his team have been researching an alternative prosthesis made from the body's own tissue since 2010. This prosthesis grows with the body and is accepted by the immune system.

To create the replacement valve, doctors remove tissue from the patient's pericardium and use it to form the leaflets of the new heart valve. They then attach these to a wire framework called a stent.

This is then compressed and transported via a thin catheter under X-ray control to the correct position in the heart, where it is then expanded. The operation takes only a few hours and is not performed on an open heart .

Initially, the valves are supplied with nutrients by the bloodstream, and later, cell layers also form. "The leaflets of the heart valve thus remain alive, so to speak, and can regenerate and adapt to the body's needs," Schmitt says in the press release.

"We therefore hope that these valves can last significantly longer than the models currently available, ideally a lifetime."

Children with congenital heart valve defects could particularly benefit from this technology. They would be implanted with a special stent that dissolves over time, so it doesn't hinder the growth of the heart valve.

Project leader Felix Berger, Director of the Clinic for Congenital Heart Defects – Pediatric Cardiology at the DHZC, emphasized: "We hope that with this method we can significantly reduce the number of necessary open heart surgeries."

After years of preliminary studies and approval procedures, the project recently received approval for human use. The ongoing study at the German Center for Cardiovascular Diseases (DZHK) is initially investigating the safety of the procedure in seven young adults with a congenital pulmonary valve defect.

Subsequently, it will be tested in larger studies on children. There are also plans to test the technology for other heart valves, such as the aortic valve.