For patients who have heart failure, where their heart muscle has gotten weak, one of the complicating factors that can happen is one of their heart valves, the mitral valve, can also start leaking as well. Simply because the heart muscle just isnÕt strong enough to close it. For those patients, itÕs really a difficult thing as they struggle with shortness of breath, low energy, sometimes a lot of swelling of their extremities as well. And previously, the mainstay of therapy has been different medications. But in many patients, despite those medications, they remain quite symptomatic. In the past, weÕve looked at options including open chest surgery to repair their leaking heart valve, but ultimately, have not found a really great option for them. One of the novel technologies is how to repair a leaking mitral valve through a catheter with a technique called a mitral clip, with the advantages; thereÕs no incision on a patientÕs chest, so the patient gets back to living that much quicker, back healing up. What we did not know up until recently, is how effective that was. So myself and a number of my colleagues around the country had embarked in a very ambitious clinical research trial called the COAPT trial, where we looked at just those patients who were really struggling with heart failure and leaking of their mitral valve. And we investigated how well did this new device, this mitral clip, work? What the COAPT trial really showed us for the first time is that, for those patients undergoing a mitral clip procedure instead, that that would decrease the likelihood that the patient would undergo a heart pump, or heart transplantation for the duration of that study. And so this is really a paradigm shift that we now have. The recovery period for a mitral clip procedure is a lot quicker. Most patients come into the hospital, get the procedure done, and that afternoon theyÕre able to talk to their family. And we watch them one or two nights in the hospital usually at most, with many patients going home the next day. So the recovery period is shorter, and weÕve always known that. What we didnÕt know until recently is how well we were helping patients get out of heart failure. How well we were helping patients stay at home and not come back in the hospital. And now we know that with the mitral clip therapy, for patients with heart failure and mitral regurgitation, that we are making a significant impact and improving the quality of these patientÕs lives, and now we also know weÕre extending their lives, too. At the University of Virginia, weÕre one of the few sites that offer availability of a mitral clip in some format of a continued access trial, or similar devices on ongoing investigation because we believe, based on the data we saw from the COAPT trial, that this could truly help our patients.