Structural Heart Clinic
Expertise in Advanced Heart Care
MyMichigan Health’s Structural Heart Clinic is based on best practices for treating patients with advanced heart valve disease. The program is specifically designed to evaluate patients for advanced heart valve treatment, using minimally invasive heart procedures to repair or replace the patient’s defective valve.
Clinic patients benefit from the expertise of a multidisciplinary team of experienced specialists, including cardiologists, cardiovascular surgeons, interventional cardiologists, and cardiac imaging specialists. This team-based approach is designed to tailor the right treatment for each patient.
Structural heart diseases are conditions that affect the heart’s structure or overall anatomy. This includes the heart’s valves, walls, chambers and muscles. When the structure of the heart is not formed correctly or damaged, blood flow can be altered and result in major complications. Structural heart conditions may be present at the time of birth or acquired later on in life.
Structural Heart Team
Our structural Heart Team is experienced in diagnosing and treating the following types of structural heart disease:
- Aortic Stenosis (AS) – This condition occurs when there is a narrowing in the opening of the aortic heart valve.
- Heart Valve Disease – This condition occurs when something is wrong with one of the valves causing the blood to not flow properly in and out of the heart.
- Mitral Valve Regurgitation – This condition occurs when the mitral valve of the heart doesn't seal tightly enough and results in blood flowing backward into the heart.
- Mitral Valve Stenosis – This condition occurs when the leaflets or cusps of the mitral valve stiffen, thicken or fuse together causing the valve to narrow.
- Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) – This condition is the result of a hole that exists between the wall of the upper two chambers of the heart because it didn’t close up after birth. The hole allows blood to leak from one chamber to the other.
- Atrial Septal Defect – This condition is the result of a birth defect in which there is a hole in the wall that divides the upper chambers of the heart.
- Tricuspid Regurgitation – This condition occurs when the tricuspid valve of the heart doesn't seal tightly enough and results in blood flowing backward into the heart instead of moving forward into the lungs.
Complications from Structural Heart Disease
Types of Treatment for Structural Heart Disease
Minimally-invasive Heart Procedures Offered at MyMichigan
- Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) – A minimally-invasive procedure designed to treat aortic stenosis in patients who are high-risk or too sick for surgery. During the procedure an artificial aortic valve is inserted through an artery in the neck, leg or between the ribs, and placed inside the diseased valve while the heart is still beating.
- Left Atrial Appendage Closure (Watchman™) – A minimally-invasive procedure to implant the WATCHMAN device into the left atrial appendage (LAA) of the heart to close off the area and keep harmful blood clots from forming and entering the blood stream and potentially causing a stroke in patients with atrial fibrillation.
- Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair (MitraClip™) – A minimally-invasive treatment for patients unfit for open-heart surgery in which the mitral valve is repaired via a catheter guided into the heart. The MitraClip device is a small polyester wrapped metal clip that decreases mitral regurgitation by clipping together a small area of the mitral valve.
- Transcatheter Edge-to-Edge Repair (TriClipTM) – A minimally-invasive treatment for patients unfit for open-heart surgery in which the tricuspid valve is repaired via a catheter guided into the heart. The TriClip device is a small polyester wrapped metal clip that brings together portions of the tricuspid valve leaflets (flaps of the valve), improving the seal and reducing the leaking.
TriClip™ is a trademark of Abbott.
