PARIS, May 18 (Xinhua) -- Repairing the heart is one of the challenges that the medical community continues to study. At an international medical conference held in Paris recently, a heart valve replacement system developed in China drew wide attention from the international medical community.

　　The heart valve replacement system, known as J-Valve, was introduced by Ye Arrow, a professor of cardiac surgery at the University of British Columbia in Canada, at the European Interventional Cardiology Exchange Conference. After learning more about the clinical data of this system, experts from many countries praised it for its "excellent performance".

　　According to Ye, compared with similar medical devices, the J-Valve heart valve replacement system has distinctive features: first, it can treat both heart valve stenosis and heart valve insufficiency, which is one of the very few replacement systems worldwide that can have both functions, significantly expanding the scope of indications; second, the system is easy to learn and convenient to use, and the success rate is higher when doctors actually operate it, which also significantly reduces the risk of postoperative complications.

　　According to reports, the J-Valve system has been used in more than 100 clinical trials at Fu Wai Cardiovascular Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, and Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai. Ye Arrow, who performed the world's first transapical heart valve replacement surgery and has performed hundreds of such procedures to date, emphasized that the system in China has proven to be "reliable, safe and effective" for the treatment of heart valve stenosis and insufficiency.

　　Zhang Ji, the inventor of the system and chairman of Suzhou Jie Cheng Medical Technology Co., Ltd. told reporters that it also has the advantage of being less invasive and relatively low-risk for patients than traditional heart valve replacement methods.

　　According to the introduction, the traditional heart valve replacement method requires open-heart surgery. Doctors make a dozens of centimeters long incision in the patient's chest and manually replace the valve using extracorporeal circulation while the patient's heart is stopped, which usually takes up to 3 to 4 hours and is very risky for older, frail patients. In contrast, the J-Valve System replaces open-heart surgery with minimally invasive replacement technology, which eliminates the need for cardiac arrest and extracorporeal circulation of blood. With a small wound of a few centimeters in the chest, the J-Valve System can complete valve replacement using its own movable positioning device.

　　"This will allow many older, frail patients who are not suitable for traditional surgery to receive new types of treatment that will extend their lives and improve their quality of life. At the same time, new advanced medical technologies are an important part of health care system reform, and countries around the world are using new medical technologies to reduce the burden on public health care, with effective and timely treatment of heart valve disease being one notable example," said Zhang Ji.

　　According to data, 12 million people worldwide suffer from heart valve disease, and hundreds of thousands of people pass away each year as a result. China is also a country with a high prevalence of heart valve disease, with more than 2 million patients and more than 200,000 patients requiring surgery each year.