{"id":4145,"date":"2011-03-11T18:56:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-11T23:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=4145"},"modified":"2020-07-02T18:10:33","modified_gmt":"2020-07-02T23:10:33","slug":"replacement-atrial-fibrillation-maze-niv-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2011\/03\/11\/replacement-atrial-fibrillation-maze-niv-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Can Heart Valve Replacement &#038; Atrial Fibrillation Treatment Occur During The Same Surgery?&#8221; Asks Wendy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Wendy just sent me an interesting question about heart valve replacement surgery and atrial fibrillation. She writes, &#8220;Adam &#8211; At 68, I&#8217;m confused and nervous. I&#8217;ve been dealing with atrial fibrillation for some time. But, I was just diagnosed with a severely leaking mitral valve. Can a surgeon fix both problems during one operation? Or, will I need two separate procedures? Thanks, Wendy&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-22265\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/..\/Images\/atrial-fibrillation-image-heart-valve_3.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"494\" height=\"316\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>To answer Wendy&#8217;s question, I spoke with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Niv-Ad-Takoma+Park-Maryland.php\">Dr. Niv Ad<\/a>, a leading cardiac surgeon at White Oak Medical Center in Takoma Park, Maryland. Dr. Ad shared several helpful facts about atrial fibrillation and its connection to heart valve disease.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>According to Dr. Niv Ad, between 35%-50% of heart valve patients have some type of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/atrial-fibrillation.php\">atrial fibrillation (abnormal heart rhythm)<\/a> at the time of their surgery.<\/li>\n<li>Dr. Ad suggested that atrial fibrillation (A-Fib) is seen most commonly in patients with mitral valve disease but not infrequent in patients with aortic valve disease.<\/li>\n<li>Atrial fibrillation is more common in patients over 65 years of age, according to Dr. Ad.<\/li>\n<li>While A-Fib may not be directly related to valve disease, it is common that patients with atrial fibrillation can develop a dilated left ventricle that, in turn, results in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/mitral-valve-regurgitation-symptoms-leaking.php\">significant mitral regurgitation<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Specific to Wendy&#8217;s question about the surgical treatment of heart valve disease and A-Fib during the same operation, Dr. Ad believes that approach is not only possible but appropriate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cYour surgeon should have more than a good reason not to address atrial fibrillation during a valve procedure&#8230; Correcting A-Fib is going to improve surgical outcomes and the patient\u2019s quality of life &#8212; without increasing the operative risk in the majority of cases.\u201d &#8212; Dr. Niv Ad<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp; <\/p>\n<p>Last year, I was fortunate to observe Dr. Niv Ad and Dr. Paul Massimiano perform a minimally invasive mitral valve repair and Maze procedure (for atrial fibrillation) during a 4-hour operation.<\/p>\n<p>Thanks to Wendy for her question about atrial fibrillation and heart valve replacement surgery. And, a special thanks to Dr. Niv Ad for sharing his clinical expertise. To learn more about heart valve replacements, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-valve-replacement.php\">click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22266,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-atrial-fibrillation-afib"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145","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=4145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}