First Austin Implant of Austin-Manufactured On-X Heart Valve Prosthesis.

AUSTIN, Texas--(BW HealthWire)--Oct. 14, 1999--

The first Austin implant of the new On-X(R) Prosthetic Valve was performed Thursday October 14, 1999 at Brackenridge Hospital by a surgical team led by Dr. Emery Dilling of Austin's Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeons. The implant was used to replace a malfunctioning heart valve in the patient.

Cardiothoracic and Vascular Surgeons (CTVS), is one of the leading physician groups in Central Texas and has been a pioneer for 40 years in state-of-the-art diagnostic and surgical procedures of the heart, lungs, chest, and major blood vessels in the human body. Collectively, 17 surgeons care for patients of all ages, from infants to seniors. CTVS performs over 1,000 open-heart surgeries a year and 25 percent of those are valve replacements.

This implant marks the first participation by an Austin hospital in the On-X Valve United States clinical trial, which is being conducted under U.S. Food and Drug Administration Investigational Device Exemption rules. The On-X Valve is a mechanical bileaflet heart valve designed and manufactured in Austin, Texas by Medical Carbon Research Institute, LLC (MCRI(R)). On-X Valves are manufactured from On-X(R) Carbon, an advanced, elementally pure, unalloyed form of pyrolytic carbon.

Austin is a major center for prosthetic heart valve design and manufacturing. Since 1979 approximately 95 percent of the pyrolytic carbon components for all mechanical heart valve implants worldwide have been manufactured in Austin. More than 90% of all of the mechanical valves implanted worldwide contain at least one pyrolytic carbon component. Mechanical valves are constructed from man-made materials, in contrast to biological valves, which consist of tanned biological tissues.

There are approximately 200,000 heart valve replacements per year worldwide with 69,000 in the United States. Approximately 70 percent of all heart valve replacement implants are mechanical valves.