Logo
10 out of 11 Articles
HADASSAH MEDICAL ORGANIZATION

Life-saving Breakthrough for Heart Disease at Hadassah Medical Center

Instead of performing open-heart surgery, with all its risks, to repair a defective aortal arch that has an aneurysm – a bulge in a blood vessel caused by a weakness in the blood vessel wall – interventional cardiologists at the Hadassah-University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem are the first in Israel to fix it by minimal catheterization.

The first case, on an elderly man at high risk of death, was performed in May without official Health Ministry approval on compassionate grounds. There have been two more cases since then.

The fourth patient who underwent the two-and-a-half-hour procedure on Thursday, August 25, Meir Yitzhak of Kiryat Yam, is only 55. He was the first case in which the $32,000 implant was a commercial product recognized by the health ministry and paid for by his health fund, Maccabi Health Services. It is threaded toward the heart via arteries in the leg and/or the arm and covers the balloon-like aneurysm in the aorta that then doesn’t have to be removed.

Several hundred patients in Europe and New Zealand underwent implantation of the delicate Dacron implant called Nexus – developed by the Endospan company in Herzliya Pituah – in clinical trials. It now has certification from the European CE authority after the product was deemed to meet EU safety and health requirements. (JPost / VFI News)

“God, we thank you for enabling us to treat difficult conditions and spread our innovations around the world, so that more people can benefit from them.”

The suggestions, opinions, and scripture references made by VFI News writers and editors are based on the best information received.

Want to see more from VFI? Follow us on Facebook! Our official Facebook name is Vision for Israel. Follow us there and please hit “like” if you like us.