The New Young at Heart

One of the most long-awaited advances in modern cardiac medicine has arrived, and dozens of high risk, mostly elderly heart patients at Massachusetts General Hospital are benefitting from it. It is a procedure that involves inserting a new state-of-the-art artificial valve in the hearts of patients with defective aortic valves that are restricting blood flow, a life-threatening condition called aortic stenosis. Mass General is one of more than two dozen sites across the country — and the first in New England — that participated in a recently-completed clinical trial to test the effectiveness of the non-invasive valve replacement method.

Innovation Central

Stop any doctor or scientist in the hallways of Massachusetts General Hospital and its maze of laboratories and they will tell you: their bright ideas are virtually worthless without an environment that fosters them. Indeed, clinical innovations and research discoveries cannot emerge in a vacuum. So how is it, exactly, that Mass General has become a hotbed of new research discoveries, from breakthroughs in cancer detection to stem cells? How do its clinicians continue to find new and better ways to treat patients? Usher new devices into care?