{
  "id": 10807679,
  "title": "1st public insurance-covered iPS heart sheet surgery conducted in Japan",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/29/1st-public-insurance-covered-ips-heart-sheet-surgery-conducted-in",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-09-29T23:30:08.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "The Mainichi",
    "slug": "the-mainichi",
    "url": "https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260930/p2g/00m/0sc/008000c"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "On Tuesday, a Japanese hospital performed the first public insurance-covered surgery using induced pluripotent stem cells to treat severe heart failure. The procedure, conducted at Osaka Keisatsu Hospital by professor emeritus Yoshiki Sawa, involved attaching a cardiac muscle sheet derived from iPS cells, known as RiHeart, to the patient's heart. The patient, a 50-year-old woman from Kanagawa Prefecture, is currently in stable condition and is expected to be discharged within two weeks to one month. The RiHeart treatment, priced at 53.2 million yen ($340,000) per patient, is available to patients who have not seen sufficient improvement with existing therapies. The surgery was made possible by Japan's high-cost medical expense benefit system, which caps patients' out-of-pocket payments when bills become too expensive. RiHeart was developed to address ischemic cardiomyopathy, a condition in which blocked blood vessels hinder blood flow to the heart. In clinical trials, all eight treated patients experienced symptom relief, including reduced fatigue and palpitations, as well as improved heart function and exercise capacity. The commercialization of RiHeart was conditionally approved in March, and public health insurance coverage began on September 1. The treatment needs to prove its efficacy by 2033 to earn full approval, with the company aiming to perform the operation on 75 patients. The iPS cells used in the procedure, developed by Nobel Prize-winning scientist Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University, have the ability to differentiate into almost any human cell type and proliferate indefinitely.",
  "summary": "OSAKA (Kyodo) -- A Japanese hospital on Tuesday conducted surgery to treat severe heart failure using a cardiac muscle sheet derived from induced plur",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}