A novel percutaneous closed chest swine model of ischaemic mitral regurgitation guided by contrast echocardiography

Introduction

Alternative approaches for mitral valve repair are constantly being developed. Even though the safety of these devices has been extensively assessed in healthy animals before approval for first-in-man studies, often the efficacy of these new devices has hardly been challenged in vivo in the setting of mitral regurgitation (MR). Therefore, reliable and reproducible preclinical animal models of MR are crucial to allow the safety assessment and efficacy evaluation of these novel approaches.

Material and methods

Eight young female Landrace domestic pigs (60±12 kg) were used. A control group with age, sex and weight-matched animals was ...