ALEXANDRIA, Va., Jan. 20 -- United States Patent no. 12,527,942, issued on Jan. 20, was assigned to Edwards Lifesciences Corp. (Irvine, Calif.).
"Pulmonary vein shunting" was invented by Hao Shang (Irvine, Calif.) and Zheng Lin (Fountain Valley, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A method of shunting blood involves accessing a left atrium of a heart with a surgical instrument, advancing the surgical instrument into a pulmonary vein fluidly coupled to the left atrium, forming an opening in a wall portion of the pulmonary vein, and shunting blood from the pulmonary vein into a right-side structure of the heart through the opening in the wall portion of the pulmonary vein."
The patent was fi...