John's Profile

I was diagnosed with severe aortic stenosis in September 2017. I decided to enter the Medtronic Partner 3 TAVR trial being conducted at Duke. After numerous tests and the passage of much time, I was accepted for the trial program. Unfortunately, the randomization that was then done had me come up for traditional open heart surgery rather than TAVR. Needless to say I was very disappointed after all I had gone through to not qualify for TAVR. My surgeon, Dr. Gaca will perform a mini-thoracotomy on me in two weeks. He comes well recommended by my sister on whom he performed a TAVR aortic valve replacement in Feb. of this year.