Lisa's Journal

Klara Čičić  Dear Lisa, welcome! This site is wonderful and it helped me a lot. Keep us posted and we will help as much as we can. Hang in there, you can do this!

Marie Myers  Repair is always preferable to replacement, so i would definitely as about the mitral repair success rate and how many repairs he/she does per year. I was also very nervous about meeting the surgeon, mostly because i was very nervous about the surgery itself. You really want to have confidence in your surgeon and hospital. Keep us posted!

Kathy Ozio  Your starting out and this is the hardest part. Make sure youfeel confident in your surgeon. You found a great site. Richard stated the two most important questions. Ask pros and cons about replacement valves for back up just in case. 

Sue Maize  Hi Lisa, I met my surgeon just before Christmas, not realizing at the time that I even needed surgery—I thought my cardiologist was just sending me for a second opinion on the severity of my condition. At the time I didn’t even know what questions to ask—then I found this website and it has educated me beyond what I could have hoped for. I’d encourage you to peruse as many resources here as you can—Adam has curated a great list of videos which are mostly him interviewing cardiac surgeons about questions generated from this community. Have your pen and paper handy to jot down any questions specific  to you that arise. I didn’t have the vocabulary to articulate the questions I needed to ask, and it seemed like so many here did, so whenever I stumbled across something unfamiliar, I looked it up. You can also see if your surgeon is listed in the database of surgeons here and check their reviews. Best wishes! 

J Alexander Lassally  Hi In addition to above, be aware that there are around 25 Mitral Valve reference surgeons in the US - these docs do more than 80 a year with excellent outcomes. You'll want one of these, if possible. 
If you are in So Cal (guessing) there are three I think...
Also know that each surgeon does their mix of preferred options. There are three main choices. So a classic sternotomy doctor will sell you this, and a robot / thoracotomy doctor will sell you that. It will be up to you to follow the story line and pick the best option as presented from the surgeon. 
General rule - anyone under 50 mitral valve cases a year is quite a low volume. 30-40 is a real cutoff.  Prefer high numbers of mitral valves. 

Thomas Brusstar  I was also diagnosed young (age 20) but at age 54 my mitral valve got severe and needed fixing.  Others gave you great advice.  I agree find somebody who does a lot of these surgeries, and make sure they almost always repair rather than replace.  I had a regular sternotomy (where they cut the breastbone and open the chest), but robotic access means they cut holes between the ribs at various points and work remotely using robots.  The sternotomy is a faster surgery, with less time on the circulation pump, because the robotic remote method takes more time.  The less time on the pump, the better.  My doctor also said he preferred sternotomy because it gave him more options if there were any surprises.  He was one of the famous mitral valve surgeons; but I think the robotic methods have gotten better every year.  Mine was almost 6 years ago.  But ask about advantages and disadvantages of sternotomy versus robotic.  You'll do great!  Mitral repairs are easy!

J Alexander Lassally  Thomas - So true - same philosophy I share - I had sternotomy just 8 weeks ago for those reasons. Time on pump matters...