StarTric is developing an innovative structural heart technology to treat the regurgitation of the tricuspid valve.
StarTric is the first and only minimally invasive repair device, conceived as a transcatheter replica of the highly effective open surgery technique, the edge-to-edge Clover repair.
History
StarTric founders include Prof. Ottavio Alfieri, who contributed to cardiac surgery with his “Alfieri-stich” or “edge-to-edge” repair of the mitral valve, and Prof. Michele De Bonis: together they pioneered the Clover technique for the repair of the tricuspid valve.
Building on this legacy, StarTric transcatheter device is designed to replicate the results of the Clover repair. Today StarTric has been extensively prototyped and successfully tested in in-vivo and ex-vivo pathological model, and final product development is ongoing.
Need
Tricuspid regurgitation (TR) is a serious and common cardiovascular disease: the tricuspid valve (TV), fails to close properly during systole. This results in a reduced oxygenation of the body, causing symptoms impacting QoL, and consequences such as atrial fibrillation, heart failure and death: with up to 85% mortality at 10-years after diagnosis. TR affects 0.4% of the whole population and 4% of that over 75 years old: about 70 million patients worldwide.
Nonetheless, only less than 3% of patients are treated by open surgery because of its very high operational mortality (9%).
Furthermore, recent first generation transcatheter devices, originally conceived for the mitral valve, showed limited efficacy and accessibility only for a small population of patients.
Conversely StarTric, designed for the TV and based on a tricuspid surgery technique, aims to be at the forefront of next generation technologies, with the goal of being safe, effective, easy to use and personalised, so to be truly accessible to the vast population of TR patients.
Disclaimer. StartTric is currently under development and not available for clinical use.
