Chapters Transcript Video New Device Means Fewer Heart Surgeries for Babies Video Embed A medical device just approved by the US Food and Drug Administration could be a game changer for infants with heart disease who require stents without being too dramatic. The FDA approval of this stent will result, I believe in a monumental shift in the way we care for babies with heart disease. I have literally been waiting for this stent anxiously for more than 30 years. The newly approved Renata minima stent is a soft flexible. First of its kind device specifically designed to grow and expand with babies. Until now, interventional cardiologists were using resized adult stents, metal mesh tubes with a fixed diameter which wouldn't grow with a child. Right now, our options are to send those babies back to surgery to have them made bigger open heart surgery typically or to do something where we actually break the stent with a strong balloon, we explode a balloon inside of it and break the stent to allow the vessel to grow. And, and as you might imagine, neither one of those are are great options. The new stent which Doctor Zahn was involved in creating simplifies the process tremendously when the stent needs to be expanded, it's a procedure, not surgery. So you don't need general anesthesia. Um We take an angiogram, we put a balloon inside the stent, we make it a few millimeters bigger. Take the catheter out, put a band aid on the leg. Patients can go home within 24 hours. Jake Schumacher. A rambunctious young boy was the first Cedar Sinai patient to receive the new stent when it was an experimental procedure. He's like any six year old loves to climb, loves to run. And you'd never know he was once slowed down by a heart condition. In the end, we have like our perfect child who has no limits at this point. So we're very happy and grateful for that. Now that the wait is over, Zan is looking forward to sharing the new device far and wide. Now that we have FDA approval, we get to disseminate that technology all across the United States initially. And I just know how long, how long my colleagues and how badly they've been waiting for this for so long and how many babies we can treat? I I can foresee a day coming pretty soon where we're going to be able to save a lot of babies. Um Because of this work. Created by
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