A team of cardiologists and cardiac surgeons at Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham (QEHB) is now offering a new procedure for heart patients.

It means QEHB joins a small list of highly specialised centres in the UK performing Percutaneous Mitral Valve Repair (PMVR).

This is a minimally invasive way of helping patients, who otherwise would have needed higher risk open heart surgery.

This novel procedure involves repairing the mitral valve, through the skin via the groin, using a catheter instead of conventional open heart surgery.

Until now, patients from the Midlands would have had to travel to other cities to be considered for this procedure.

Not all patients were accepted, and the associated travel caused considerable hardship and inconvenience for patients and their loved ones. The first ten people had the procedure at QEHB between March and June this year, with an age range of between 69 and 90 years.

Consultant Cardiologist Dr Adnan Nadir, who is leading this programme, said: “All the procedures we’ve done so far have been very successful and uncomplicated. The patients have felt better and reported the symptoms benefits noticed.

“The team is excited and delighted to offer the PMVR procedure for our patients here in the Midlands who are at high risk of complications from open-heart surgery to repair the mitral valve.”

The mitral valve is one of the four heart valves that control the flow of blood into the left side of the heart. It is the most complex valve in the heart and the procedure is highly specialised.

Patients who are eligible for PMVR have a leaking mitral valve (Mitral Regurgitation). Here, the leaflets do not meet in the middle, so the heart pump, or left ventricle, must work harder, and the chambers of the heart may enlarge leading to heart failure.

The PMVR procedure takes between two and three hours and patients only need an overnight stay in hospital for monitoring. Patients can get out of bed and walk around the next day.