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SALT LAKE CITY -- Doctors at Primary Children's Medical Center have performed the first successful heart valve implant without open heart surgery.
Congenital heart disease patients often require open heart surgery to repair or replace defective pulmonary valves. But last week 20-year-old Charli Noyes received a new valve through a catheter and she walked out of the hospital the next day with only a small incision.
Dr. Collin Cowley, director of Cardiac Catheterization and Pediatric Cardiologist at Primary Children's Medical Center, explains, "It's an important step for us to say that we can provide every possible modality to treat patient's heart disease that's available anywhere in the world."
Doctors perform around 50 valve replacements at primary children's each year. They expect at least 30 of those to be done using the new procedure in the future.
