Adam's Heart Valve Surgery Blog – Page 35

I just received a great question from Rena about mitral valve repair and coronary artery bypass grafting (also known as CABG). Rena writes to me, “Hi Adam – I’m in for a ‘double doozie’. I have a bad mitral valve (severe regurgitation) and a blocked artery. My cardiologist suggests surgery soon. In looking at the different options, I’m curious to know if the robot can do both mitral valve repair and bypass in one procedure? If so, is it safe or risky?”

To provide Rena an expert response, I contacted Dr. Thomas Molloy, who is the Director of Cardiovascular Surgery at Adventist Medical Center’s Northwest Regional Heart Center in Portland, Oregon. In his response, Dr. Molloy wrote:

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There is nothing better than hearing from the patients and caregivers within our community.

A few minutes ago… Mark Uebelacker sent me this smiling picture of Natalie Uebelacker, his wife, who had aortic valve repair surgery earlier today at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. So you know, Natalie had a leaking bicuspid aortic valve. Like many BAV patients, Natalie also needed her ascending aorta replaced with a Dacron Graft due to an aortic aneurysm.

Natalie Uebelacker – Bicuspid Aortic Valve Patient

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We just had a great webinar about mitral valve repair surgery. (FYI, I’ll be posting the transcript and video shortly.)

Interestingly… Just before the webinar, Robyn, my wife, walked by make-shift desk in the living room.  She laughed and said to me, “Really? Do you really need all of those iPads and other stuff for the webinar? I need to get a picture of this!”

So, just how many iPads does it take to run a webinar? Take a look at the picture below for your answer.

My Desk 5 Minutes Before The Webinar

As you can see… During the webinar, I was doing my best to monitor 6 different Apple products at one time – 4 iPads, 1 Macbook and 1 iPhone.

For all of you Apple shareholders out there, I hope this made your day!

Keep on tickin!
Adam

I’ve received several questions about “The Importance of Mitral Valve Repair Surgery for Patients” webinar that is scheduled for today. That said, I’m posting the 5 most common questions for your review.

1. Can I still register for the webinar?

Yes. Due to a great patient response, we just increased the registrations for another 100 people. You can register for the webinar by clicking here.
 

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It is, by far, one of the most common questions I receive from patients who are NOT candidates for heart valve repair procedures. That question is, “How long do tissue valves last?”

As you may have seen in prior posts, several doctors in our community have commented that tissue valves can last between 10 to 15 years. That being said, Edwards Lifesciences just released some very interesting findings from a 25-year study of its PERIMOUNT valve replacement in the aortic position. So you know, the PERIMOUNT is a bovine pericardial heart valve. That means, the valve leaflets are made from the pericardium (heart sacs) of cows.

In this long-term study, 373 patients — who were under the age of 60 at the time of aortic valve implant — were followed to determine the longevity of the PERIMOUNT valve. The study, which ran from 1984 to 2008, determined that the actual durability of the PERIMOUNT valve replacement, in this patient segment, was not 10 years…

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The response to our upcoming webinar, “The Importance of Mitral Valve Repair Surgery for Patients”, greatly exceeded expectations. For that reason, we just extended our registration capabilty to another 100 people for the live event — scheduled on Wednesday, June 26 at 1pm EST. To join this educational webinar for patients, you can register by clicking here.

In addition, we are now accepting your questions for the webinar. To ask a question, simply click here.

If you — or someone you know — has been diagnosed with mitral valve disease, this educational webinar might really help them better understand their disease, their treatment options and the possibility of a very successful surgical result.

To learn more about the webinar, click here.

Keep on tickin!
Adam

As patients with mitral valve disease can be confused about their diagnosis, treatment options, surgeon selection and outcomes, I am excited to announce that we will be hosting a live webinar titled, “The Importance of Mitral Valve Repair Surgery for Patients”, on Wednesday, June 26 at 1pm EST.

During this live event, Dr. Anelechi Anyanwu and Dr. Robin Varghese, from The Mount Sinai Medical Center, will share critical information about mitral valve disease and treatment – with a focus on mitral valve repair procedures. This one-hour event is free attend. However, please note that space is limited to the first one hundred registrants. You can register now by clicking here.

In advance, many thanks to Drs. Anyanwu and Varghese for taking the time to share their research and clinic experiences with our community.

Keep on tickin!
Adam

Mike just sent me an interesting question about angina and coronary artery disease after valve surgery. In his note, Mike writes, “Hi Adam – I had an aortic valve replacement and double bypass in June 2004 by Dr. Joe Bavaria, Hospital University of Pennsylvania.  Subsequently, I have been diagnosed with angina. I have also had several cardiac catheterizations and stents placed in the artery since my surgery.   I understand that 10% of all stent and cardiac cath patients have recurrence of artery blockage.  Do you know if anyone is doing research on this issue?

To provide Mike an expert response, I contacted his surgeon, Dr. Joseph Bavaria at Penn Medicine. Within hours of sending Dr. Bavaria this question, I received the following response:

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There is nothing better than good, honest and trusted advice for patients.

For that reason, I met with Dr. David Adams, a mitral valve repair guru from The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. So you know, Dr. Adams has performed successful heart valve surgery on 100+ patients from our community including Mark Linnus, Cynthia Tarver and Monique Battaglia. 🙂

During our chat, I asked Dr. Adams, “What are your top 3 pieces of advice for patients preparing for mitral valve repair surgery?” The highlights of our discussion are provided in this video:

Many thanks to Dr. Adams for taking the time to meet with me and share his advice with our patient and caregiver community. To learn more about Dr. Adams, and see 30+ patient testimonials for this incredible person — who I was fortunate to travel with to the Dominican Republic on a recent Heart Valve Medical Mission — please click here.

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As you might remember, Theresa LoMonaco shared a recovery update with us last July. Well, it’s ten months later, and Theresa has good news to share. Here is what she writes to me:

Theresa LoMonaco – Aortic Valve Replacement Patient

Adam, I wanted to share this photo of me, wearing my red survivor’s hat, that was taken at the American Heart Association 2013 Heart-Stroke Walk in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, May 18, 2013.

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One of the most common forms of heart valve disease is regurgitation, a disorder in which blood leaks backward across the patient’s aortic, mitral, pulmonary or tricuspid valve. So you know, my inbox is often filled with questions like, “What is a leaky heart valve?” and “Are leaking valves dangerous?” and “How are leaky valves treated?”

To answer those questions, I recently met with Dr. Kevin Accola, a leading cardiac surgeon from AdventHealth Cardiovascular Institute (formerly Florida Hospital) in Orlando. The highlights of our discussion about leaking heart valves are in the educational video below. So you know, Dr. Accola has performed successful surgery on many patients in our community including Denise Ring, Misti Blue, Scott Nieman and Duane Hunt. 🙂

I hope this video helped you learn more about leaky heart valves. Thanks to Dr. Accola for taking the time to share his clinical experience and research with our patient and caregiver community. And, many thanks to Doctor Accola and the AdventHealth (formerly Florida Hospital) team for helping so many people from our website!

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Hey everybody,

During the past six years, the size of this website has grown from 10 to 100 to 1,000 to over 10,000 pages of heart valve information. Amazing, right?

However, as many of you have shared with me… Navigating to the right page, at the right time, can be difficult. For this reason, I asked my programming team to build a HUMONGOUS index of all the information at HeartValveSurgery.com. Several months later, I am very happy to announce that YOU can now search all of the content in that index using the search box located in the upper-right section of each page.

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If you have not heard of transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI), this post will introduce you to a breakthrough technology that recently received FDA approval for ‘inoperable’ and ‘high risk’ patients with severe aortic stenosis. If you have already heard of TAVI, the video below will provide you the latest update about TAVI from Dr. Michael Mack, a heart valve guru, a past-president of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons, and one of the clinical pioneers of TAVI at The Heart Hospital in Dallas, Texas — where he practices.

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I really appreciate hearing from the patients and caregivers in our community. Your emails and your phone calls are beyond heart warming (pun intended). That said, I just received an update from Joann Heindorf, a 78-year old patient from Florida, that was simply… extraordinary.

Joann Heindorf – Heart Valve Surgery Patient

Joann’s update came in the form of an envelope that was mailed to my home.

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It’s a rare occurrence when I meet a world-renown cardiac surgeon who has also been a patient.

That said, when I recently connected with Dr. Randolph Chitwood, I wanted to learn more about his heart surgery experience and how it shaped his career as a surgeon. So you know, Dr. Chitwood is a heart valve guru having pioneered many techniques including robotic mitral valve repair surgery.

Thanks to Dr. Randolph Chitwood for sharing his experiences as a patient and a surgeon. Also, I want to thank Dr. Chitwood and the East Carolina Heart Institute for taking such great care of many patients from our community including Scott Newson, Lori Glew and Amy Machty.

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I received a great question from Andrea about the symptoms of heart valve disease. In her note, Andrea writes to me, “Hi Adam, My 81-year old mom is experiencing symptoms due to mitral regurgitation. She is constantly short of breath and has ankle swelling. My question is… Why are her ankles swelling? Will that go away after surgery?”

To answer Andrea’s question, I contacted Dr. Adam Harmon, a cardiac surgeon from Sequoia Hospital in Northern California who has performed over 3,000 heart procedures and more than 400 valve operations. In his response to Andrea, Dr. Harmon explained:

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As we learned in the recent video about atrial fibrillation, other cardiac disorders can accompany a heart valve disease diagnosis. For example, many patients in our community were also diagnosed with an aortic aneurysm.

To help you learn more about aortic aneurysms, I recently met with Dr. Eric Roselli, a heart surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. So you know, Dr. Roselli has performed successful surgery on many members of our community including Denise Kirchner, Matt Miller and John Carr. Here are the video highlights from our discussion.

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In 2010, we donated $5,000 to the Gift of Life to help pay for the cardiac surgery of Victor Saravia, an incredibly cute, one-year old boy from El Salvador. The procedure — that was performed by Dr. John Morales at Driscoll Hospital at Corpus Cristi, Texas — was a success and Victor went home to his family.

The other day, I received an unexpected update from the Saravia family on my Facebook page. As you can see in the picture above, Victor has transformed from a baby to a toddler – who appears to be quite fond of the Mario Brothers toys.

In addition to the picture, I also received a note from Patricia Saravia.

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The response to our aortic stenosis infographic was extraordinary. Thus far, the infographic received over 300 Facebook ‘Likes’ and more than 135 Twitter posts.

Given this response, I was very fortunate to learn of another very helpful and very educational infographic about the realities of the heart disease epidemic.

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In the past, I’ve filled this blog with hundreds of stories about mitral valve repair procedures. However, over the past 12 months, I have started to hear and report about aortic valve repair surgery — from patients and physicians.

To learn more about this new trend to aortic valve repair surgery, I met with Dr. Joseph Bavaria. So you know, Doctor Bavaria is the Vice Chief, Division of Cardiovascular Surgery and the Director of the Thoracic Aortic Surgery Program at Penn Medicine. In addition, Dr. Bavaria has performed successful surgery on many members of our community including Rebecca Roberts, Hubert Karreman and Craig Fisher.

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