The blue purple splashing you see here is the problem, a backwards flow of blood from a leaky mitral valve. And the little white device can be a solution.

The mitral valve is named the mitral valve because it looks kind of like the pope's miter, that hat with two leaflets.

Mayo Clinic cardiologist, Dr. Peter Pollak, says this metal clip is a new option for fixing a leaflet that leaks or is torn.

What we can do with this technology is staple, or clip, those two leaflets together and reduce, or eliminate, the amount of leak that's going backwards.

Smaller than a dime, and implanted using a catheter tube, the clip is intended for patients who are too old or too sick for traditional surgery.

They just wouldn't recover from the open chest procedure.

But thanks to this closed chest beating heart procedure, now there's another way to mend a mitral valve leak.

It allows them to feel better almost immediately.

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May 13, 2019