Mitral Valve Leakage, The MitraClip and Life Without Open-Heart Surgery (podcast)

Is the MitraClip device right for you and your heart?

Dr. Matthew Price, Scripps Clinic Interventional Cardiologist featured in San Diego Health podcast discussing MitralClip

Dr. Matthew Price, Interventional Cardiologist, Scripps Clinic 

Is the MitraClip device right for you and your heart?

The heart is a complex organ with many different parts, one being the mitral valve, which controls the blood flow in the left side of the heart. The mitral valve separates the left atrium, which fills with blood from the lungs, and the left ventricle, the major pumping chamber that pushes blood to the aorta. But what happens when that crucial valve leaks? Previously, doctors' only recourse was open-heart surgery, but that wasn’t an option for some patients who were too ill or too frail. Enter the MitraClip, a device that holds the valve’s two leaflets together and can be inserted without open-heart surgery. 


In this episode of San Diego Health, host Susan Taylor and guest Matthew Price, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Scripps Clinic who has implanted more MitraClips than any other doctor in San Diego and was involved the clinical trials that led to FDA approval, discuss the MitraClip, what the procedure entails and what the recovery process looks like. 


A leaky mitral valve, which can be caused by age-related degeneration, allows blood to travel back toward the lungs instead of forward to your brain and muscles. A severe leak can lead to a slew of symptoms ranging from fatigue and shortness of breath to an enlarged heart and eventually congestive heart failure. The MitraClip restores valve function without open-heart surgery. It’s inserted via catheter and patients can usually go home the next day. The end result is a patient whose heart is getting stronger. The ultimate goal is to restore that patient’s quality of life. 

Listen to the episode on MitraClips

Listen to the episode on MitraClips

Podcast highlights

How does the mitral valve work? (00:41)

The mitral valve's an important valve. It's the valve that separates the left atrium, which fills with blood from the lungs and the left ventricle, which is the major pumping chamber of the heart that pushes blood out to the aorta. That valve, which is made up of two leaflets, opens when the heart relaxes and closes when the heart squeezes. If you have a leaky mitral valve, when your heart squeezes, instead of blood going forward to your brain and your muscles, the blood goes backwards towards the lungs. If you have a severe leak, you can get short of breath, your heart can enlarge and get weak, you could feel tired, gain weight and have problems breathing while doing just even very simple tasks.

What causes a mitral valve to leak? (1:35)

Unfortunately, we get degeneration in those leaflets of a mitral valve as we get older. They become floppier and there's these little cords that tether the leaflet down much like the tethers of the cords of a parachute can actually snap and cause the leaflets of the mitral valve to flutter and not hold and when the heart squeezes.

What is MitraClip? (2:37)

The MitraClip's a really neat thing. If part of the valve is flopping backwards and not sealing with the other leaflet, we just grab the two leaflets and pin them together right where the leak occurs. Instead of going from a single orifice of a valve opening and closing, you go to a double orifice valve. This way, the part that's leaking will connect to the other leaflet and seal it.


In fact, it's really interesting. A very smart cardiologist saw a surgeon in Italy doing a procedure, instead of using a clip, he uses stitches ... His name is Ottavio Alfieri and is from Milan. He said, "Hey, maybe we can do that with a catheter rather than open-heart surgery," and the MitraClip was born.

How do you put the MitraClip in? (3:36)

It's a fairly complex device. This is just the clip itself. I like to say it looks like a clothespin more than a clip. What's really neat is that this clip has two arms that open and close. One of the arms grabs what's called the anterior leaflet and the other arm grabs the posterior leaflet.


What I would do is advance this clip through your heart and underneath the leaflets of the mitral valve. Then I would retract the arms just a little bit to make a V and pull back on the clip until the two leaflets rest very nicely in those arms. When I see by a special echocardiogram or ultrasound that I've got both of those leaflets, I drop the grippers. Once I've grabbed the leaflets, I'm going to retract the arms and grab them.


I've now brought those leaflets together where they are leaking. I do a very comprehensive assessment to make sure it looks fine. If I don't like it, no big deal, I can just open up the arms and release the leaflets and move my clipper to grab it again.


If I like how it looks, I can release the clip from the cable to which it's attached and leave it behind.I can put in as many as one to four clips in a particular patient in order to reduce that leak so the patient feels better. Their heart remodels and gets stronger, the blood pressure in their lungs comes down and they can hopefully regain their quality of life.

What is the recovery time? (7:35)

One of the miracles of modern medicine is if a patient walks into the hospital for this procedure, the patient goes home the next day.


When a patient goes through open-heart surgery, the patients stay a week or longer in the hospital and really don't feel like themselves for at least one month, if not months. With a MitraClip procedure, patients go home the next day. They have very few limitations. I don't like patients to lift heavy things for a few days after the procedure just to protect their groin, but otherwise, recovery is very rapid.

Who is a candidate for this procedure? (10:43)

When someone is being evaluated for a MitraClip, it's a fairly comprehensive evaluation. We do a whole host of tests. We need to make sure that the patient is anatomically eligible for the clips. There's certain situations, certain types of mitral valve problems that the clip is not a great solution for. That's the exception rather than the rule.


We want to make sure that there's not other things going on that are more important than the leaky mitral valve. There are a lot of reasons why people can be short of breath, so we need to confirm that the leak is severe and needs to be fixed. We have a comprehensive heart team approach. Patients see me, a cardiac surgeon, and often will see a heart failure physician who specializes in heart-related shortness of breath. Together, we come up with a decision, "Should we operate on this patient? Should we put in a MitraClip or maybe they don't need mitral valve therapies at all."


Now, as time goes by, we've had advances. We're actually now studying replacing the mitral valve with catheters, a whole new valve inside your heart. That is reserved for particular patients who are not great MitraClip patients.