Briefly describe minimally invasive heart surgery. Define CoreValve in your answer

What will be an ideal response?

In 2011, minimally invasive heart surgery was in clinical trials at 40 sites in the United States. Traditionally, surgery to replace a heart valve required the surgeon to split the breastbone and put the patient on a heart-and-lung machine. In minimally invasive heart surgery for valve replacement, "a catheter [is] inserted into the femoral artery. Then a device called a CoreValve—made of a special alloy and heart material from a pig—[is] threaded through the blood vessels to the aortic valve using X-ray guidance. Once implanted, it expand[s] and becomes an entirely new gateway…." If approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, this procedure would help people who have aortic stenosis (where the aortic valve does not open correctly) but who are too sick for the traditional open heart surgery. In Europe, the CoreValve has been approved; 15,000 people have had the surgery.