Edwards…this truly is a unique company. Edwards Lifesciences’ roots date to 1958, when Miles “Lowell” Edwards set out to build the first artificial heart.
Edwards was a 60-year-old, recently retired engineer holding 63 patents in an array of industries, with an entrepreneurial spirit and a dream of helping patients with heart disease. His fascination with healing the heart was sparked in his teens, when he suffered two bouts of rheumatic fever, which can scar heart valves and eventually cause the heart to fail.
With a background in hydraulics and fuel pump operations, Edwards believed the human heart could be mechanized. He presented the concept to Dr. Albert Starr, a young surgeon at the University of Oregon Medical School, who thought the idea was too complex. Instead, Starr encouraged Edwards to focus first on developing an artificial heart valve, for which there was an immediate need.
After just two years, the first Starr-Edwards mitral valve was designed, developed, tested, and successfully placed in a patient.
From my early days at Siemens, I learned about what a blood pressure transducer was. Then it was how to set up cardiac output thermo dilution at the point of care replacing FICK and Green Dye from the cath-lab then to cardiac care.That was in the 80’s. Edwards is the leader in this, but also the world’s leader in cardiac valves.
TAVR with the SAPIEN 3 valve: Better than surgery for intermediate-risk patients
Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) with the SAPIEN 3 valve demonstrated 75% lower rates of 30-day all-cause mortality and disabling stroke compared to surgery in intermediate-risk patients.
