Gurugram, Nov 28 (IANS): Doctors have given a 65-year-old Delhi-based patient suffering from heart valve leakage, a new lease of life using a unique treatment procedure.

The patient was suffering from a severe case of heart valve leakage and was not responding to any medicines.

"Due to his age and physical weakness, he could not undergo the standard heart valve repair and replacement surgery and thus we opted for the MitraClip procedure," said a team of doctors led by Praveen Chandra, Chairman, Heart Institute at Medanta - The Medicity, in a statement on Wednesday.

MitraClip is a non-surgical treatment option in which a catheter is inserted in the patient's leg through which a clip is placed in the heart to hold the leaking valve.

"It is a safe alternative to the traditionally prescribed valve repair surgery," added Saibal Kar, a globally-acclaimed interventional cardiologist from Los Angeles.

Mitral valve is the one connecting two chambers of the left side of the heart, which receives impure blood from all over the body and then sends it ahead, to the lungs for purification.

A leaking mitral valve affects nearly 10 per cent of the population who have coronary artery disease, heart attacks or bypass surgery and continues to increase with age. The continuously leaking valves put pressure on the heart causing breathlessness.

The minimally invasive heart valve repair is a simple procedure which offers benefits such as immediate recovery and the patient returns to a normal routine within 48 hours of the surgery.