Mitral valve repair with the Colvin-Galloway Future Band

A new annuloplasty device, the Colvin-Galloway Future Band, has been developed to allow simple and safe mitral valve repair surgery. Here we report its clinical use and the clinical results after a short-term, 2-year follow-up.

We assessed the performance of this new device in 40 consecutive patients (55% male; mean age, 68.3 +/- 8.1 years) who were operated on for mitral valve incompetence between 2001 and 2002. Ninety percent of these patients had associated surgical procedures. Clinical and echocardiographic assessment was performed perioperatively and at a mean follow-up of 16.5 +/- 5.7 months (range, 6 to 25 months) in all patients (100%), permitting analysis of 55 patient-years.

Thirty-eight patients survived surgery, resulting in an overall early mortality of 5.0%. There were four noncardiac-related late deaths, resulting in an overall late mortality of 10.0%. Perioperative echocardiography showed no incidences of systolic anterior movement at the time of discharge from the hospital and satisfactory mitral repair results in 36 (95%) patients. At the time of the 2-year follow-up, echocardiography showed satisfactory mitral valve function in all but 2 patients (94%) and a significant postoperative ventricular remodeling: the left ventricular end-diastolic diameter decreased from 64.5 +/- 6.2 mm preoperatively to 50.4 +/- 9.5 mm postoperatively (p < 0.1). At the time of follow-up, 29 (90.6%) patients were in New York Heart Association functional class I or II, all of them describing their quality of life as "significantly improved" if compared with their preoperative status. There were no late reoperations and no thromboembolic, bleeding, or other complications.

The clinical results of the Colvin-Galloway Future Band in this short-term follow-up of patients undergoing complex mitral valve repair seem to be promising.