{"id":19561,"date":"2015-08-05T13:45:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-05T18:45:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=19561"},"modified":"2019-02-26T19:06:51","modified_gmt":"2019-02-27T00:06:51","slug":"tavr-patient-story-nina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2015\/08\/05\/tavr-patient-story-nina\/","title":{"rendered":"Patient Update: After Four Emergency Room Visits, Nina Finally Gets A TAVR!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nina Bamford was taken to the emergency room four times due to symptoms including shortness of breath. Nina was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis. Nina was told that open heart surgery was &#8220;too risky&#8221; for her.<\/p>\n<p>At 81 years old, Nina wanted to live.<\/p>\n<p>This is her story&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Q0w4EZU8tOA\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Nina for sharing her inspirational story with us. And, a special thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Marc-Gerdisch-Indianapolis-Indiana.php\">Dr. Marc Gerdish<\/a> and the Alliance for Aging for supporting the filming of this educational patient success story about TAVR.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.livingwithvalvedisease.org\/\">Learn more about seniors &amp;\u00a0valvular disorders at LivingwithValveDisease.org.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, I have provided a written transcript of the video below.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Bamford:<strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>I think I knew that I had something wrong, but I didn\u2019t know exactly what it was. My blood pressure was going up, and got very dizzy to the point that I couldn\u2019t even walk. I had to sit down.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Marc Gerdisch: As people grow old, the most common things to change are number one, actually for the aortic valve to stiffen. Nina Bamford had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-stenosis-valve-heart-narrowing.php\">critically stenosed, or blocked aortic valve<\/a>, and was in advanced heart failure from it. She could do very little. Toward this point in her life while she was older there was other things happening that made her very high risk just to have a standard aortic valve replacement.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Bamford: \u00a0I was scared. I was really scared, because I didn\u2019t know whether they were going to open up my chest and put this new valve in. I didn\u2019t know what I was going to be after the valve.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Marc Gerdisch: \u00a0 \u00a0You could really kind of see it in her eyes that she felt like she was winding down, and that she wasn\u2019t going to be able to live her life anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Bamford: \u00a0 Someone my age having some heart surgery \u2013 because all the time in my mind, \u201cThey\u2019re going to cut me open.\u201d This is what really scared me.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Marc Gerdisch: We spent some time together kind of understanding what she expected out of life, and then we went after it. Fortunately, for Nina we were able to perform <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/tavr-procedure.php\">a transcatheter aortic valve replacement<\/a> where we advance the valve from the leg artery, up into the heart, and into the aortic valve. Then, we replaced her aortic valve without stopping it and without opening her chest. The advantage for a senior receiving a transcatheter aortic valve replacement really has to do with their risk stratification.<\/p>\n<p>When they\u2019re very high risk for standard surgery, then this offers them something that we don\u2019t have to have the recovery for, and that we don\u2019t have to have the same types of risks for. It\u2019s kind of a different selection. It\u2019s an opportunity to avoid being on the heart-lung machine. It\u2019s an opportunity to avoid perhaps a little bit bigger incision. Those things can have consequences for someone who\u2019s particularly frail.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Bamford: \u00a0 It\u2019s just wonderful not to have it any longer, and not to have a feeling of short breath. I\u2019m glad I had it done. I really am. You have a lot more strength than you did before, but now I can walk and feel so much better. It amazed me. It really amazed me that something like that can make you feel so much better. That old valve must have been really something. It was a bad valve.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Marc Gerdisch: Nina, after surgery became a new person again, really. As usual, when we do TAVR for an older person with really advanced disease, it takes a little while for it to actually catch up with them, and then they feel really well. That\u2019s what\u2019s happened with Mrs. Bamford.<\/p>\n<p>Nina Bamford: \u00a0I don\u2019t like to advise anybody to do something that I was afraid to have done, but if that would be the case I would say, \u201cPlease, whatever you do, have it done, because it will probably be the best thing that ever happens to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aortic-valve-replacement"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}