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Aortic coarctation is a congenital heart defect that leads to a narrowing of the aorta. It forces the heart to pump harder to move blood through the aorta. Children with this heart defect usually experience labored breathing, poor growth, pale appearance, or heart murmur. For infants between one and six months of age, balloon angioplasty is particularly safe and successful in immediately improving the vessel diameter. However, balloon angioplasty has some limitations in the elastic recoil of the vessel wall, and it can sometimes lead to complications, such as re-coarctation and aneurysm formation. Therefore, when the children reach 20kg body weight, some surgeons would choose stent placement after balloon angioplasty to reduce the complications, improve luminal diameter and sustain hemodynamic benefit.  

      In 2020, BeGraft Aortic Stent was launched in Taiwan by Getz Healthcare Taiwan. This aortic stent is specially indicated for both iliac stenting and coarctation. Over the past two years, Getz Healthcare Taiwan has been working on the listing progress at the hospital and the promotion events focussing on coarctation. With numberless effort and time, we finally had our first Aortic coarctation case in Taiwan, operated by the pediatric cardiologist, Jou-Kou Wang, at National Taiwan University Hospital. At first, Dr. Wang was deciding between BeGraft Aortic Stent and our competitor which was an old brand that has been in Taiwan for more than 10 years. After considering the small size of the patient's femoral access point, Dr. Wang decided to complete the operation with BeGRaft Aortic stent which only requires 9 French sheaths. The small profile, smooth delivery, and accurate deployment of the stent amazed the surgeons. The result of the aortic stenting was successful, and it immediately relieved the blood vessel narrowing. Future reinterventions are periodically required as the patients grow. Therefore, we still have a long journey to observe the long-term performance of the BeGraft Aortic stents in coarctation cases. We are very pleased to be part of this operation as we continue to provide more treatment options for those battling heart diseases.