Issue link: https://tmcpulse.uberflip.com/i/870419
t m c » p u l s e | s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 7 16 16 Giving the Heart a Rest A new medical device is poised to help heart failure patients without invasive surgery B y C h r i s t i n e H a l l Jace Heuring, Ph.D., chief scientific officer for Procyrion, and Reynolds Delgado III, M.D., founder and chief medical officer of Procyrion, demonstrate how their medical device helps heart failure patients. A n entrepreneur, an engineer and a doctor walked into a lab more than four years ago and created a medical device that could help millions of heart failure patients who cannot be helped by medication alone. Aortix is a catheter-deployed heart pump that provides circulatory support without surgery. Procyrion, the com- pany born in the Texas Medical Center that created Aortix, recently completed a successful trial of the device in six humans who were receiving stents. The pump was implanted successfully in patients for a few days to reduce the workload of the heart. About three inches long and thinner than a No. 2 pencil, the pump can move approximately as much blood as a native heart—about six liters per minute, according to Benjamin Hertzog, Ph.D., president and CEO of Procyrion. The removable pump's concept was developed by Reynolds Delgado III, M.D., founder and chief medical officer of Procyrion and medical director of mechanical assist devices in heart failure for the Texas Heart Institute and Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center. "Originally, bypass surgery was the only way to treat coronary disease, then stents came along, followed by cardiologists and cath labs," Delgado said. "Instead of replacing the valve by opening the chest and putting the patients on a heart-lung machine, now you can do it with transcatheter aortic valve replacement and a cath lab." Delgado's idea was to place a small pump in the body, downstream of the heart, so it would not interfere with the failing heart and would also reduce some of the work pumping blood that the failing heart was struggling to do. The Aortix pump takes about 10 minutes to implant into the descend- ing thoracic aorta through the femoral artery in the groin. When in place, little anchors that look like slim, metal fingers spring out and hold the device in the aorta.