CD Laboratory for Microinvasive Heart Surgery

In the CD Laboratory for Microinvasive Cardiac Surgery (μHC), new surgical procedures are developed to solve open clinical questions for patients with heart disease not only in Austria, but all over the world.

The aim is to develop and improve new instruments and surgical techniques for minimally invasive cardiac surgery in order to make these procedures gentler, faster and safer thanks to the expertise acquired and the prototypes developed.

The CD/μHC Laboratory is based on four important research categories:

1) Improved heart valve prosthesis and its implantation: The concept of the "WorldValve", in which the new heart valve is constructed from the body's own tissue (pericardium) during the operation, is new and is being developed in the laboratory. To create this improved heart valve prosthesis, the pericardium is integrated into a prosthetic valve stent.

2) Microinvasive heart valve repair: Here, existing imaging techniques are combined with innovative devices to enable minimally invasive heart valve repairs on the beating heart. The aim is to avoid the negative effects of cardiac arrest.

3) Microinvasive bypass surgery: Bypass surgery is the treatment of choice for severe coronary artery disease. The aim of this CD Laboratory is to enable completely micro-invasive, purely arterial bypass surgery. This means that highly invasive operations including sternotomy, a vertical surgical division in the sternum to open up the entire chest area, can be avoided.

4) Specific instruments for catheter-based high-end procedures: The complexity of interventional surgical procedures is constantly increasing. The development of new interventional tools, such as endovascular scissors, is necessary to make heart valve repairs more flexible and easier.

The CD/μHC Laboratory conducts application-oriented basic research to overcome current problems in cardiac surgery and achieve long-lasting results with minimal trauma, less pain and a quick return to normal life.