DALLAS and NEW YORK – February 2021 – The Heart Valve Collaboratory (HVC) announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) will participate in this “collaborative community”. A medical “collaboratory” is a forum in which multidisciplinary private and public sector members work together on medical device challenges to achieve aligned outcomes, solve shared problems, and leverage collective opportunities, in the interest of improving patient care.
Amar Gupta, MD, FRCS(C), an abdominal transplant and hepatopancreatobiliary surgeon on the medical staff at Baylor University Medical Center, was skeptical about the benefits of the robotic surgical system in complex liver surgeries. He saw it as a gimmick, something that was more industry-driven than something that would offer a real benefit to patients. After a week’s observation of a surgeon in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, who has performed more than 200 robotic hepatectomies, Dr. Gupta became a true believer in its value.
Patients with chronic pancreatitis often experience intractable pain. Patients make frequent trips to the emergency department and may have numerous hospital admissions. They also can experience significant lifestyle disruptions and a greatly diminished quality of life.
The opioid epidemic has resulted in thousands of deaths in people infected with acute hepatitis C (HCV) due to IV drug use. Because many of these people are undiagnosed, especially in high-risk populations, many organs from HCV-positive donors are still being procured. The development of highly effective direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapy has made it possible to successfully transplant HCV-positive organs into HCV-negative recipients and treat the hepatitis C post transplant.
