主讲人简介：

Frederic HEIM is a professor of Université de Haute Alsace, Mulhouse,FRANCE. He is also the R&D Manager at GEPROVAS which promotes researchactivities in the field of cardiovascular devices. Most his research activitiesand efforts have been devoted on development of Heartvalves, stents, endograftsand other cardiovascular devices.

活动内容摘要：

Over 300.000 heart valves are replaced everyyear in western countries and valve therapy represents today one of the mostcommon surgical procedures performed in the world. Trans-catheter aortic valveimplantation (TAVI) has become a highly suitable option for a population moreand more concerned with valve diseases.

Currently, the valve material used in TAVIis biologic tissue, such as bovine pericardium. However, once assembled insidethe metallic stent and crimped at low diameter for catheter insertion, studieshave shown that the biological materials may become degraded. Moreover, theharvesting, treatment and preservation of pericardium becomes a complexprocedure and a critical cost issue.

It has already beenshown that fibrous constructions could be considered as potential candidates toreplace TAVI biological valve leaflets. In particular, these structures haveoutstanding folding and strength properties and these materials are easy tocrimp and insert, even in low profile devices. Moreover, fibrous mats arediscontinuous, mitigating the risk of a catastrophic rupture. Regarding theinteraction with living tissues in vivo, recent work bring out new designstrategies in combining various polymer materials, which can be partiallyresorbable. Hybrid scaffolds could thus be produced, and serve for valve invivo tissue engineering.