UPMC Performs Less-invasive Aortic Valve Replacement

UPMC surgeons performed the first round of procedures that replaces patent's aortic heart valve without having to perform open heart surgery. The hospital is one of 40 hospitals nation-wide participating in the Medtronic CoreValve® Clinical Trial evaluating a non-surgical procedure as an alternate to open-heart surgery for aortic stenosis patients. The procedure requires doctors to channel a catheter through a small opening in the femoral artery to reach the patent's heart, then the CoreValve is guided to the aortic valve where it self-expands to replace the diseased valve.

William Anderson, director of Interventional Cardiology at UPMC, says that this procedure is different than other methods. "The gold standard of therapy for aortic valve replacement is to do it through open heart surgery, and that's an operation that we've done for a long time and we're very familiar with. The disadvantage to it is that it is maximally invasive and it has a relatively long recuperation period."

Anderson says that the procedure has yet to show whether or not t will be a commercial success. He says that there are two other valve replacements being made available commercially relatively soon and we should see in the next 12 months if either is successful.

Aortic stenosis prevents the heart's aortic valve from properly opening which leads to less healthy blood flow from the aorta to the rest of the body. Approximately 300,000 people suffer from aortic stenosis worldwide, one third being deemed too high risk for open heart surgery.

The CorevValve System will be available commercially until the end of its clinical trial and approval of the FDA.

Searching for A Cure

As the population ages and is increasingly at risk for developing Alzheimer’s Disease, researchers continue searching for a cause and a cure.

Curcumin, commonly known as the spice Turmeric has been shown to have beneficial effects in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The catch? A person would have to consume pounds and pounds of it a day or take 400 tablets of a supplement daily.
But with the help of a new foundation’s money researchers at The University of Pittsburgh and Harvard University are working together to create new drugs that will slow or cure the disease. And their focus is on the spice.

"Ninety nine point nine nine nine percent gets broken down – its thrown out by the body. So what they’re trying to do is find that 000.1 percent of curcumin that would get to the brain from pounds gets to the brain from taking one little pill. So that’s the whole idea here to make a curcumin derivative that’s stabile in the body but still does the same thing that curcumin does," said Bill Klunk, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Pittsburgh and Co-Director of the Alzheimer Disease Research Center.

This week they received $400,000 from The Cure Alzheimer’s Fund, a local foundation.
Alzheimer’s Disease is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that destroys memory and thinking skills. Five million Americans have it. By 2050, 16 million Americans are expected to have the disease.

UPMC to Expand by 500

Most of the 500 positions UPMC plans to add in the coming year will be at UPMC Presbyterian, UPMC Shadyside, and in the insurance division. The move comes as the non-profit announced operating income that jumped 13 percent in the fiscal year ending June 30. The jobs come just a few years after the now 20-hospital network cut a similar number of workers. UPMC Spokesperson Paul Wood says those positions were very different than the ones that will be created. Woods says the system always has about 1,000 job openings as it deals with attrition however he says he does not think they will have any problem filling the new positions. In its latest financial report UPMC reports it generated $8 billion in revenue and netted $240 million in operating income for fiscal 2010. That compares to $212 million in 2009.

Department of Defense Partners with McGowan Institute of Regenerative Medicine

The organizations are partnering to support treatments for battlefield injuries.

The two-year, $12 million dollar contract will push forward human trials for three research programs that will place healthy tissue in place of damaged tissue.
One program will replace muscle tissue with one’s own stem cells and to evaluate the injection of human connective tissue cells into contracted burn scars to allow greater freedom of movement.

Dr. Bernard J. Costello is Chief of Craniofacial and Cleft Surgery at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Dental Medicine. He will be examining the effectiveness of a material to facilitate new bone formation in cranio-facial defects using a calcium phosphate cement. He showed an audience at Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall how it would work on Tuesday.

Costello says it’s an upgrade of technology that’s already FDA approved. It will be custom-tailored regenerative material that will turn into the patients own tissue.
"We can then get away from bone and soft tissue substitutes but really turn into designer materials that are regenerative, not replacement so we can get away from the carpentry of surgery and really get into the next stage of designing specific tissues that are for those types of problems," he said.

Eighty patients will be seen during the trials. 40 will be in Pittsburgh, the remaining at other locations. At least half of them will be soldiers.