Every year, 1.3 million babies are born with congenital heart disease worldwide. One third of them need an artificial valve implant. These complex heart surgeries save hundreds of thousands of babies’ lives every year. But valve implants are not a perfect solution. New valves need to be implanted every few years, which requires multiple operations that have a deep impact on these children’s quality of life. In this episode of Vis A Vis, we discuss a pioneering technique currently being explored to improve operations on children’s hearts. This technique involves the creation of artificial heart valves that expand as the child’s heart grows, which will significantly cut down the number of operations a child has to undergo. This innovation is being developed by David Kalfa, Florence Irving Assistant Professor of Surgery and Director of the Pediatric Heart Valve Center at Columbia University; and Abdul Barakat, AXA Professor at the Hydrodynamics Laboratory at Ecole Polytechnique and co-Chair of Biomedical Engineering at Institut Polytechnique de Paris.

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