Adam’s Heart Valve Surgery Blog

I just received an email from Jenny, a 57-year old mother of two, who was recently diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis.

According to her cardiologist, Jenny needs aortic valve replacement surgery in the next 3-6 months. That said, Jenny asked me, “Adam - What do you consider to be the latest technology in aortic valve surgery? I have heard that the new, minimally invasive procedures are less invasive and help the patient recovery faster. Is that true?”

As you may know, I am high technology consultant specializing in electronics manufacturing. That said, I spend my workdays examining the manufacturing technologies and processes for many different types of electronic products. My clients are in all areas of technology - computing, industrial, consumer, wireless and medical.

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According to ABC News, a New South Wales woman has become the first Australian to have a heart valve replaced without open heart surgery in a procedure that may revolutionize cardiac treatment for the frail and elderly.

In the minimally invasive procedure, a new aortic valve is attached to a long rod and fed through a small incision in the groin up to the the heart, where it defrosts and expands.

The state-of-the-art operation could replace conventional open heart surgery for many older patients who are too frail or ill to cope with a major operation and long recovery time.

Kathleen Condon, a 92-year-old from Port Macquarie in New South Wales, became the first to undergo the procedure, but her doctors say dozens of other Australians will soon follow.

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Medical technology never, ever, never, ever ceases to amaze me!

Here is an interesting report from TheHeart.org specific to the diagnosis and surgical correction of heart valves:

Published appraisals of real-time three-dimensional transesophageal echocardiography (TEE) are trickling into the medical literature. One such study, appearing in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology (JACC) this week, suggests that the breakthrough technology is feasible in most patients, permits faster image acquisition, and delivers superior images of certain cardiac structures than can be obtained with either real-time transthoracic echocardiography (TTE) or reconstructed 3D TEE imaging technology.

Echocardiographers who have used the device made by Philips Medical Systems say the published papers simply CAN NOT capture their EXCITEMENT or convey the extent to which the technology will revolutionize an imaging method for surgical planning and percutaneous procedures.

Dr Roberto M Lang (University of Chicago, IL), stated that 3D-MTEE “will become, in the near future, part of the routine TEE examination.”

But other echocardiographers—a group not known for superlatives—used phrases like “unbelievable advance,” “absolutely fantastic,” and “blown away” to convey their enthusiasm, and struggled to list any shortcomings of the technology. Not only will 3D-MTEE revolutionize their day-to-day jobs, they say, it also makes the images they obtain instantly accessible to nonechocardiographers.

“You can essentially produce images, in real time, that look exactly like what you would see if you had the heart in front of you,” Dr Linda Gillam (Columbia University, New York) told heartwire. “It’s a display that surgeons, or anyone else with any knowledge of the structure and function of the heart, can immediately relate to.”

Click here to see 3D-MTEE images generated by the new Philips device for the mitral valve, the aortic valve and the tricuspid valve. Needless to say, it is fascinating to see an actual valve in three dimensions versus the 3D heart valve model I posted here a few weeks ago.

Keep on tickin!

Adam Pick is a double, heart valve surgery patient and author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery, a unique book which integrates the clinical facts of heart valve surgery with the personal experiences of an actual heart valve surgery patient. To learn more about Adam and his heart valve surgery book, click here.

The push to stem cell research continues. It appears that heart valves are definitely on the agenda for stem cell experimentation, according to iWire. A recent report suggests that Australian scientist Yosry Morsi is ready to use tissue engineering to grow valves and tissues.

Morsi says it is likely that the process he is now developing to grow artificial heart valves could likely be tested on animals in one year and used in humans within five years. Dr. Morsi, from Swinburne University, in Melbourne, is working on technology that may one day grow complete organs from just a few cells. Currently, he is working on growing heart valves within his laboratory at Swinburne University’s Industrial Research Institute Swinburne (IRIS).

Keep on tickin!

Adam Pick is a double, heart valve surgery patient and author of The Patient’s Guide To Heart Valve Surgery, a unique book which integrates the clinical facts of heart valve surgery with the personal experiences of an actual heart valve surgery patient. To learn more about Adam and his heart valve surgery book, click here.

One of the more frequent conversations I have with patients focus on new, minimally invasive technologies for heart valve replacement and heart valve repair. You can read prior posts about Edwards catheter-based aortic valve replacement or the Evalve Mitraclip for mitral valve repair.

According to The Star, Jack Burd, aged 17, became one of the first patients to have a new heart valve replaced via keyhole surgery - in his leg.

As you can see from the open heart surgery scars running down his chest (see above), this was Jack’s third heart surgery. Like many of us, Jack, from the United Kingdom, was born with a congenital heart defect. This last heart procedure was required to replace a heart valve that was simply worn-out.

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