Dr. Gerald Lawrie, one of the world’s most experienced cardiac valve surgeons, has developed a new approach to the surgical treatment of Barlow’s disease, a condition that severely damages the mitral valve and causes a backward flow of blood between chambers in the heart.

Using this new technique, Lawrie does not remove key structures of the valve called the leaflets, as is commonly done in patients with Barlow’s. Instead, in order to restore normal function, he resizes the valve and repositions the leaflets within the left ventricle or chamber of the heart. Lawrie published his use of this new technique in the September edition of Annals of Thoracic Surgery.

“Using this new technique, we restore the patient’s own valve, preventing the need to replace it with a mechanical valve that will require life-long blood thinner medications for the patient. The success rate has been 100 percent to date,” said Lawrie, who holds the Michael E. DeBakey Endowed Chair for Cardiac Surgery at The Methodist Hospital.

Lawrie performs this procedure using the DaVinci surgical robot, which enables him to repair the valve through three small incisions rather than opening the chest cavity, providing his patients with faster recovery and less pain.

The mitral valve controls blood flow from the left atrium into the left ventricle, which pumps oxygenated blood from the heart to the organs of the body. Complications of mitral regurgitation include enlargement of the heart, heart failure and pulmonary congestion, which happen when the heart can no longer cope with the severe leakage of blood from the heart backward into the lungs.

For more information on the Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center, see http://www.debakeyheartcenter.com.

Source:  Methodist Hospital, Houston