Harvey's Journal

I've just had TMVR or Mitra Clips for my leaky mitral valve. There are two things that happened to me that would be useful for everyone who is considering this operation to know. First, my correction is only to 2+ while my original regurgitation was at 3+/4. Apparently, this lower level correction is common for this procedure. This is a bit of a disappointment to me, but I was out of the hospital the next day and recovery should be very short. I had the Da Vinci robot with Dr. Vaughn Starnes at USC about 14.5 years ago. So, this is my second repair. The nice thing about this is that it is considered a repair and I don't need any blood thinner. I recommend Dr. Saibal Kar who is presently at Los Robles Hospital in Thousand Oaks CA--formerly at Cedars Sinai in LA. He has done thousands of these operations and co-heads the third stage evaluation of this procedure. Unfortunately, he had to puncture twice to get to my femoral vein and nicked an artery causing bleeding at the leg. This was quickly stopped with an injection of Thrombin at the site. However, my leg has swelled up and discolored with a hematoma that covers much of the upper leg. After two weeks, it is still painful to walk, but I still consider this a decent trade off for not undergoing traditional open heart surgery with the heart-lung machine.