ARTICLE SUMMARY:
Innovation in tricuspid valve therapies has long lagged other transcatheter heart interventions. But that gap is beginning to close. A deeper understanding of the disease—combined with the emergence of three first-generation devices now in clinical use—is accelerating progress. Start-ups are entering the field, though the pace remains more measured than the surge once seen in the mitral valve space. We interview Edwards Lifesciences, VDyne, TriCares and Innoventric.
The heart’s tricuspid valve has often been called “the forgotten valve,” even though tricuspid regurgitation is the most prevalent valve abnormality in the US. While interventions for aortic stenosis and mitral regurgitation have proliferated over the past decade, tricuspid valve disease has remained largely untreated. Until recently, there were no on-label therapies, and even surgical intervention for this high-mortality condition has historically been used off-label.
This lag reflects more than technical difficulty, although the tricuspid valve’s complex, asymmetric geometry—highly variable across patients—and potential interactions of implants with nearby anatomy certainly pose challenges.
