{"id":36564,"date":"2023-03-24T11:23:03","date_gmt":"2023-03-24T16:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=36564"},"modified":"2026-01-09T14:25:28","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T19:25:28","slug":"dr-accola-patient-story-small-incision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2023\/03\/24\/dr-accola-patient-story-small-incision\/","title":{"rendered":"Amy&#8217;s Wonderfully Serendipitous Patient Success Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I could ramble-on about the serendipitous moment we just experienced at The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Conference in San Diego. Instead, I will simply encourage you to click the play button on the video below to see why Amy&#8217;s question about small incisions brought a huge smile to the faces of Dr. Kevin Accola and myself.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Jl9R6HIJVxw?rel=0\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\n<!--more--><\/p>\n<h2>Amy&#8217;s Story Gets Better Thanks to Dr. Accola<\/h2>\n<p>Ready for the best part of this story?<\/p>\n<p>Just three days after Dr. Accola and I filmed this video in San Diego&#8230; Dr. Accola performed a successful aortic valve replacement on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/journals\/mystory\/amyberger\">Amy Berger<\/a> at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/florida-hospital-cardiovascular-institute-valve-microsite\">AdventHealth in Orlando, Florida<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As the cliche goes, &#8220;A picture is worth a thousand words.&#8221;\u00a0 So, here is a picture of Amy flashing our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/journals\/\">Community<\/a> a &#8220;Thumbs Up&#8221; just three weeks after surgery.\u00a0 Doesn&#8217;t Amy look great?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36569\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/amy-3weeks.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Kevin Accola Patient 3 Weeks After Heart Surgery\" width=\"400\" height=\"465\" \/>Amy 3 Weeks After Heart Valve Surgery<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And&#8230; Here is a picture of Amy swimming just five weeks after heart valve surgery.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-36570\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/patient-swimming-after-heart-surgery.jpg\" alt=\"Patient Swimming 5 weeks after heart surgery\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" \/>Amy Swimming 5 Weeks After Heart Surgery<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Reflecting on her experience with Dr. Accola&#8230; Amy shared, &#8220;I am so thankful to Dr. Accola at AdventHealth Orlando and the surgical team who took care of me. I truly believe that my quick recovery has a lot to do with him only making a 4-5 incision mid-sternum incision. I\u2019d highly recommend Dr. Accola to everyone. Not only is he an excellent surgeon, but he is also caring and compassionate. I\u2019m also so thankful to Adam and this website because it\u2019s through this website that I found Dr. Accola.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Kevin-Accola-Orlando-Florida.php\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/profileImages\/148_129_157.jpg\" alt=\"Dr. Kevin Accola\" width=\"129\" height=\"157\" \/><\/a>Dr. Kevin Accola<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Many Thanks to Amy, Dr. Accola and AdventHealth<\/h2>\n<p>On behalf of our patient community, many thanks to Amy for sharing her question and her story with our community.\u00a0 And, a special thanks to Dr. Kevin Accola for being such a wonderful supporter of our community and such an incredible care provider for our patients.\u00a0 In addition, we would like to thank the entire AdventHealth team for taking such great care of the patients from HeartValveSurgery.com.<\/p>\n<p>Related Links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/journals\/mystory\/amyberger\">Learn About Amy Berger&#8217;s Heart Surgery Story<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/hospital\/florida-hospital-cardiovascular-institute-valve-microsite\">Discover the AdventHealth Heart Valve Microsite<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the deaf and hard of hearing members of our community, I have provided a written transcript of Dr. Accola\u2019s interview below.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Pick: Hi, everybody. It\u2019s Adam with heartvalvesurgery.com, and we are at the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Conference. I\u2019m really happy to be with Dr. Kevin Accola, who\u2019s a leading cardiac surgeon at Advent Health in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Accola, it is great to see you again.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Accola: Thank you so much, and again, it\u2019s a privilege to be here. We\u2019ve been doing this for so long, and we\u2019re so appreciative of what you\u2019ve done and developed and how that\u2019s helped our patients because it\u2019s really an important source of information for them. At a time when they may be anxious, they can talk to other patients, they can see the different blogs, the different things that you have available, and I really think it makes them feel better. It takes away a lot of their anxiety.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Pick: Thank you so much for the kind words, and to your point, we\u2019re going to answer a patient question from a post that came in earlier today. Dr. Accola, this post comes in from Amy. It\u2019s a special question as you\u2019re going to see when I read it. Amy writes, \u201cHi, Adam. Hope all is great. I\u2019m having aortic valve replacement with Dr. Kevin Accola on Tuesday.\u201d Today is Saturday, so this is coming right up here.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Accola: We\u2019ve never had that come up before when it\u2019s this next week.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Pick: Yeah, so she says, \u201cI was told Dr. Accola does the procedure with smaller incisions, about four inches. Is there any data about the benefits of this and having a smaller incision and its impact on the recovery?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Accola: Yes, Amy. I think it does impact the recovery because smaller incisions, we don\u2019t open the chest as far, and people usually don\u2019t complain typically of sternal pain because it\u2019s a nice solid bone and it heals nicely. It takes about six to eight weeks just like a broken arm or leg to heal, but once it heals, it\u2019s as strong or stronger than it was before. They don\u2019t complain so much of pain in the front but more so in the back as we open the sternum, so by nature, making a smaller incision, we don\u2019t open the sternum as far, and so yes, there is less pain during recovery I feel. Sometimes we\u2019ll use a partial sternotomy, typically a whole sternotomy, but the shorter, smaller incision really prevents us from opening the sternum as wide therefore having less pain.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Pick: Amy, I hope that helped you. Dr. Accola, on behalf of all the patients at heartvalvesugery.com, patients all over the world, I want to thank you for not only answering Amy\u2019s question but in advance for taking care of her aortic valve, helping her through this process along with obviously her family too, so thanks for everything in advance that you\u2019re going to do to help Amy.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Accola: Absolutely. Thank you, Adam. It\u2019s good to see you again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":36579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-patient-stories"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36564","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=36564"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43205,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36564\/revisions\/43205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}