A globally recognized Venezuelan invention, helping lives throughout the world

By E.C.V. & ASOCIADOS

Jose Herrera Cedeño is a Venezuelan doctor who in March 2014 was granted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) patent number 8668669, named Method and a catheter device for the dynamic regulation of the venous return to the heart for the treatment of patients with heart failure.

The invention relates to a method that comprises the introduction of a catheter via left subclavian vein, advancing into the right atrium and then positioning it in the inferior vena cava, just at the cava-diaphragm junction, where it is anchored at its extreme; and thereafter an external inflation of a balloon positioned in said catheter takes place through a physiological solution to reach a diameter corresponding to half the diameter of the inferior vena cava, resulting in hemi-occlusion in the expiration phase (breath-out) and total occlusion for a short period during the inspiration phase (breath-in), regulating (normalizing) the venous return and decreasing the cardiac volume overload, as a treatment for heart failure. The invention also comprises hydromechanics devices to normalize the venous return in the circulatory system. Said venous return is increased in 90% of patients with heart failure.

One of the objectives of the invention is to solve in efficient and effective way the above outline problems through a method of regularization of the venous return by means of hydraulic devices, in patients suffering congestive heart failure. Another objective is to provide said regularization, a device that includes a two-way catheter carrying an inflatable balloon, adjustable in volume comprising of several external slots, so that in case of prolonged total occlusion of the inferior vena cava (laughing, coughing), these will allow the passage of venous return, as an alleviating channel to avoid cardio-circulatory collapse. Said balloon is filled from the outside, to the required setting, with a saline solution, through which an occlusion of the inferior vena cave is formed during the inspiration phase (breath in.) An additional objective of the invention, once placed and anchored and inflated the catheter/balloon in the proximal portion of the inferior vena cava, is to produce an instantaneous dynamic cyclic occlusion depending on the respiratory phases, thereby obtaining the normalization of the flow running from the inferior vena cava toward the right atrium (RA.)

Since his invention Herrera Cedeño has been acclaimed worldwide and invited to several of the most prestigious medicine events. On December 8, 2019, he was a speaker at the ICI Meeting 2019, the premier international meeting for innovation in cardiovascular interventions, which took place in Tel Aviv, Israel. Herrera Cedeño talked about the caval flow regulation phenomenon from the discovery to a medical device, as it has been known within the field of the specialty that heart failure is a result of the increase of the venous return which causes volume overload and severe pulmonary congestion.