ALEXANDRIA, Va., Sept. 23 -- United States Patent no. 12,419,741, issued on Sept. 23, was assigned to EDWARDS LIFESCIENCES Corp. (Irvine, Calif.).
"Limited expansion heart valves" was invented by Brian S. Conklin (Orange, Calif.) and Da-Yu Chang (Irvine, Calif.).
According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A prosthetic heart valve configured to replace a native heart valve and having a support frame configured to be reshaped into an expanded form in order to receive and/or support an expandable prosthetic heart valve therein is disclosed, together with methods of using same. Interlocking members or flexible loops are included to limit expansion of the valve to one or two valve sizes, for example, with a 2-m...