I had been waiting for about ten years for the technology to catch up. The surgery was performed on November 9. They sent two leads up through my groin, one with the valve and the other with a camera. They increased the heartbeat to a high level and then placed the new valve over the old one. The pacemaker high heartbeat caused a vacuum which sucked the new valve into place.
Technology is great!
Glad it helpped, but the cost savings at a rate of .014 over the other procedures is not very exciting. 7k out of 114k is hardly a major victory for the patient as the tone of the article try to imply.
This smacks of trying to squeeze justification from statistics like blood from a turnip to me.
If it truly was a breakthrough, you would not need such an extensive study to “prove “ it.
Whatever happened to the Jarvik-7, or whatever that mechanical heart was called?
But could this be translated into English for folks like me?