A Navigation Platform for Guidance of Beating Heart Transapical Mitral Valve Repair

Traditional surgical approaches for repairing diseased mitral valves (MVs) have relied on placing the patient on cardiopulmonary bypass (on pump), stopping the heart and accessing the arrested heart directly. However, because this approach has the potential for adverse neurological, vascular, and immunological sequelae, less invasive beating heart alternatives are desirable. Emerging beating heart techniques have been developed to offer high-risk patients MV repair using ultrasound guidance alone without stopping the heart. This paper describes the first porcine trials of the NeoChord DS1000 (Minnetonka, MN), employed to attach neochordae to a MV leaflet using the traditional ultrasound-guided protocol augmented by dynamic virtual geometric models. The distance errors of the tracked tool tip from the intended midline trajectory (5.2 ± 2.4 mm versus 16.8 ± 10.9 mm,
p
= 0.003), navigation times (16.7 ± 8.0 s versus 92.0 ± 84.5 s,
p
= 0.004), and total path lengths (225.2 ± 120.3 mm versus 1128.9 ± 931.1 mm,
p
= 0.003) were significantly shorter in the augmented ultrasound compared to navigation with ultrasound alone,
¹
indicating a substantial improvement in the safety and simplicity of the procedure.