Making a Difference
Breakthrough Medical Device Innovation for Rheumatic and Degenerative Heart Disease
In 2007, David Williams, then Professor at the University of Liverpool and Peter Zilla, Chris Barnard Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery at the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa, started to discuss the possibility of developing technologies to treat the large number of children and young adults suffering from and dying of Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) in sub-Saharan Africa. This would have to be ground-breaking innovation since the only theoretical treatment is open-heart surgery, which at a practical level is essentially unavailable to these people. Williams and Zilla, along with their colleague Deon Bezuidenhout, formed a spin-out company, Strait Access Technologies (SAT), to realize this dream, patenting critical innovations that would allow low cost, minimally invasive approaches to heart valve therapy. After several years they obtained a combination of public and private investment and now employ 60 engineers on the projects. David Williams is Founding Director and Technical Director of Strait Access Technologies.
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M+
People Affected Worldwide by RHD & DHD
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K+
Patients Operated Worldwide per year
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M+
Patients in Need Worldwide per year
Carapetis J.R > et al (2015) Acute rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease NATURE REVIEW Dis Primers doi:10.1038/nrdp.2015.84
Photo Credit: https://straitaccesstechnologies.com/our-patients/
Cost-Effective Solutions
TAVR
Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement
TAVR Procedure
Juvenile sheep with with Rheumatic Heart Disease
As a world-first, SAT offers cost effective and durable transcatheter aortic valve solutions for RHD and DHD patients, in both developed and emerging economies. Specifically, the second generation balloon expandable TAVR valve for rheumatic and degenerative aortic valve disease is designed to treat the entire aortic valve disease spectrum from calcific aortic stenosis to pure aortic regurgitation in patients with non-calcified, compliant annuli.
