At the Rambam Health Care Campus in Israel, a new device has just been implanted for the first time in a patient with diastolic heart failure. The CORolla device from CorAssist Cardiovascular, a company based in Haifa, Israel, is designed to help the left ventricle open up to a greater volume during the diastolic filling than it would otherwise. The device is really just a structure made of metal wire that includes a set of springs that work together to push outward after being compressed by the left ventricle.
It is implanted into a beating heart via a transapical or percutaneous approach, a relatively minimally invasive procedure compared to open heart surgery.
The device was invented by doctors from the very hospital where it is now being tried on a 72 year-old Canadian patient who had no other treatment options left for him back home. While this is just the first patient to try the device, there are plans in the works at Rambam to perform up to ten clinical trials of the CORolla.
Here’s a video showing the principle of the new device, though the actual look and mechanics of the implant are somewhat different:
Product page: CORolla…
Via: Rambam HCC…