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BASILICA provides option for high-risk heart patients

Cardiologists at University of Iowa’s Heart and Vascular Center are the first in the state to use a new procedure that makes heart valve replacement safer for some high-risk patients, many of whom had no other options before.

The new procedure, called BASILICA—or bioprosthetic aortic scallop intentional laceration to prevent iatrogenic coronary artery obstruction—will increase the options for patients for whom traditional valve replacement procedures are too risky or simply won’t work, says Sidakpal Panaich, MBBS, an interventional cardiologist at the Heart and Vascular Center at UI Hospitals & Clinics.

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