Mending a leaking heart valve without opening the chest: eight in ten patients eased in a head-to-head trial

For people whose tricuspid valve — one of the heart's four one-way doors — leaks badly, blood slips the wrong way and everyday life gets harder. In the CLASP II TR trial, presented at the TCT cardiology meeting in San Diego, doctors guided a small repair device called PASCAL through a thin tube in a blood vessel to tighten the leaking valve, and compared it against medicines alone. The device proved superior at the trial's six-month main checkpoint, and the gains held at one year: eight in ten treated patients had their leak reduced to moderate or less, against three in ten on medicines alone, and treated patients reported feeling markedly better — an 18-point gain on a standard quality-of-life scale. The system won USA approval for this use in October 2026, and early safety stayed reassuring, with few serious problems in the first month.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation