Stress, malnutrition, alcohol use disorder and the growth of the geriatric population are factors weighing on the prevalence of heart conditions worldwide. Among these pathologies, mitral valve insufficiency (or mitral regurgitation) affects 10% of the population aged above 75 in both Europe and the US . It is characterized by the leaking of blood out of the valves, which normally ensure its one-way flood through the heart. Blood goes from the heart's mitral valve from the left ventricle to the left atrium.
In its moderate form (3% in children, 19% of the population between 50 and 60, 80% patients aged 80+), it causes chronic fatigue and shortness of breath as well as palpitations or racing heart rate that impair active life. But if the amount of leaking blood is severe (10% of people above 75), the patient dies within 5 years from sudden deaths (5 to 6% of the patients each year, approximately 18,000 people).
Mitral Insufficiency (MI) is the second most common valvulopathy in Europe. In the world 22 million of persons was affected by this disease in 2015, this figure will reach 37 million by 2030 that is a raise of 65 %.
Mitral insufficiency is treated with open heart surgery (300,000 surgeries per year in the EU/USA) and on bypass followed by intensive care, which is a hardly bearable roadmap for fragile patients. Therefore, 50% of the patients above 75 are tagged inoperable because of their age . Less invasive repair and replacement procedures (annuloplasty, transfemoral surgeries) have been tested but they all have resulted in additional problems for the patient (such as the improper sizing of the annuloplasty rings, which requires a second surgery). Moreover, all these repair procedures are highly dependent upon the skill of the cardiac surgeon where poorly or inaccurately placed sutures in valves of poor quality may affect the success of procedures.
The surgeons must be highly skilled to perform mitral repair (the valve itself shows variable anatomy and a challenging access). Specialization of the cardiac surgeon is always required, and this is a limiting factor. New accessible techniques must be found to enlarge the number of practitioners able to perform mitral repair, and to answer an unmet need: the care of today’s inoperable patients.
In this context, CMI’nov has developed MIT’rep (going for MITral repair), the first mini-invasive automated surgical device that goes directly to the mitral valve with no trial and error to affix a leak-preventing ring onto the valve with robotized movements.
