Image: cormatrix.com
Serving the Indianapolis community as Franciscan Health’s chief of cardiovascular and thoracic surgery, Dr. Marc Gerdisch, emphasizes a personalized approach to patient care. Innovation focused, Dr. Marc Gerdisch has pioneered a number of therapies and was the first worldwide to perform a tissue engineered regenerative CorMatrix ECM Tricuspid Valve implantation, as part of a phase I clinical device trial.
The unique CorMatrix valve is unstented and flexible, and is designed to enable the cells of the patient to eventually infiltrate and remodel it, such that the tricuspid valve fully functions again. With the implanted valve a part of the individual’s own tissue, there is no foreign body left behind. An added benefit is that no anticoagulation therapies, such as those associated with mechanical valve replacements, are required over the long term.
Dr. Gerdisch described the procedure he performed on a 44-year-old man as being successful, with the patient discharged home in healthy condition and back to work in construction. This contrasted with the man’s state when he entered the emergency room at Franciscan Health with an infected tricuspid valve that no longer functioned and was sending infected debris into the lungs. Unrepairable, the valve required immediate replacement. Dr. Gerdisch noted that the replacement valve appeared on echocardiogram scans as extremely similar to a normally functioning valve.
Marc Gerdisch 
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