A little lamb made history at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital last week, when a 10-hour operation was carried out on it to insert a new prosthetic heart valve designed by an American team and manufactured in Israel. Parallel experiments are being carried out at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, on calves.
The research teams from Israel and the U.S. hope to begin clinic testing of the new valve on humans in about six months, after the number of operations on animals determined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration are completed and analyzed.
The new valve was designed by an American team led by Dr. David Lederman, with the support of the National Institutes of Health, and will be manufactured in Israel by Omikron Scientific, of Rehovot.
The valve, which has no moving parts, is made from a new material based on polyetherurethane, which has advantages over both the present steel and plastic valves used (which are long-lasting but can cause thromboembolism), and biological valves made from pig valves, which have a limited life when transplanted. A pulse duplicator test has shown the new valve should last for at least 10 years.
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