Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

Topics Covered: Information on Heart Valve Surgeons; Survey of 78 Former Heart Valve Surgery Patients Shares Insight on Open Heart Surgeons; List of Top Heart Valve Surgeons and Hospitals

Our lives are full of choices. Some of those choices are life-changing, “Who will I marry?”. Some of those choices are mundane, “Should I take out the smelly trash now or later?” Some choices are downright fun, “Should I play hooky from work and enjoy a beautiful, summer day?”

With that soft prelude into this topic, I’ll let all of you know the obvious… The choice of heart valve surgeon falls smack-dab in the life-changing category. Picking the right heart valve surgeon is a critical choice that can dramatically impact your life - for the better or for the worse.

So you know, I am completely recovered from aortic and pulmonary valve replacements. I’m even back SCUBA diving and surfing. However, over the past 20 months, I have spent many hours researching the topic of heart valve surgery to help future patients and caregivers better understand the realities of cardiac surgery. (I wrote the book, The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery as a result of that research.) Anyways, as most former patients know, there are “ups” and “downs” during this long process. Like most patients, I had my fair share of both of those ups and downs.

One of the biggest “downs” I learned about during my research was revealed to me by patients who said they failed to locate and use the right heart valve surgeon. It has been quite touching to hear their stories of heart valve surgeons who either (i) failed to successfully repair / replace a valve or (ii) maintained a poor bedside manner.

Most of these patients felt that information on heart surgeons was hard to come by. And, many of these patients were in emergency situations in which they were unable to select the heart valve surgeon of their choice.

As for me… During my diagnosis, both my first- and second-opinion cardiologists suggested that I wait no longer than 30 days to have heart valve replacement surgery. While I was in no immediate danger from my leaky valve, my heart was starting to dilate. FYI, my valve was calcified and suffered from stenosis / regurgitation.

That said, my family and I began a Herculean effort to find the best heart surgeon. We spoke with cardiothoracic surgeons from all over the country. We were looking for the best heart surgeon and we found a few, well-qualified heart valve surgeons that could have performed my Ross Procedure (aortic valve replacement). I called this list of heart valve surgeons my “short-list”.

From that short-list, I selected Dr. Vaughn Starnes from USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. It was rather convenient considering I live in Los Angeles. Looking back on it, Dr. Starnes maintained all the elements I was looking for in a heart valve surgeon. The man is a heart valve guru plus Dr. Starnes has a very positive, very personal manner that many physicians just don’t have.

Back to bedside manner for a moment… I mentioned earlier that some patients told me their biggest problem with heart valve surgeons was bedside manner. To learn more about this, I performed an online survey of 78 former patients to better understand this issue. As you can see below, the results are very interesting! More than 62% of former heart valve surgery patients said that their heart valve surgeon had a bedside manner that was scored as “excellent”.

I hope the information above was helpful and that your search for the right heart valve surgeon is quick and easy!!!

Keep on tickin,

Adam

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:31 pm and is filed under Heart Valve Surgery, Top Heart Surgeons, Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print This Post | EMail This Post.