{"id":3554,"date":"2023-09-11T20:17:15","date_gmt":"2023-09-11T20:17:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/?page_id=3554"},"modified":"2023-09-11T22:55:00","modified_gmt":"2023-09-11T22:55:00","slug":"watchman-atrial-fibrillation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/watchman-atrial-fibrillation\/","title":{"rendered":"Doctor Q&#038;A: The Watchman, Atrial Fibrillation &#038; Heart Valve Disease"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We just received a great patient question from Lee about heart valve surgery, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/atrial-fibrillation\/\">atrial fibrillation<\/a> and the Watchman device.\u00a0 In his email, Lee asked, &#8220;I\u2019ve had three aortic valve replacements and valve repair plus an implantable cardioverter defibrillator. All functions are good currently, but AFib persists 3.2% of the time. After oral surgery and a ruptured vein causing a hematoma, I had to defer Eliquis to control bleeding. My current cardiologist thinks I should consider the Watchman procedure as a safety measure. What have you heard about that procedure?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To provide Lee an expert response, we interviewed <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Marc-Gerdisch-Indianapolis-Indiana.php\">Dr. Marc Gerdisch<\/a>, the Chief of Cardiac Surgery at Franciscan Health in Indianapolis, Indiana. During his extraordinary career, Dr. Gerdisch has performed over 6,000 cardiac procedures and successfully treated more than 100 patients in our community.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/1UI6KzB-qoU?si=BRXogl0jyCs6vrHa\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Key Learnings About The Watchman, AFib and Heart Valve Disease<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>While the left atrial appendage (LAA) performs select functions within the body (including the secretion of hormones), it is not critical to a patient\u2019s survival. However, the LAA does put patients at risk for the development of blood clots which can lead to stroke.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/Images\/left-atrial-appendage-fibrillation.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Watchman is a medical device designed to close the left atrial appendage and therefore reduce the patient stroke risk. Dr. Gerdisch suggests that the Watchman is a good device. However, in clinical trials, the Watchman did not outperform the use of warfarin, known as the \u201cgold standard\u201d for preventing clot formation, for thromboembolic risk reduction.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3631 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/..\/Images\/atrial-fibrillation-patient-considerations.jpg\" alt=\"Atrial Fibrillation Patient Considerations\" width=\"650\" height=\"364\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Determining patient risk for stroke can be measured using the CHADS-VASC score and help medical teams evaluate treatment options.<\/li>\n<li>The period of time in which a patient experiences atrial fibrillation is another indicator of whether-or-not treatment may be advantageous.<\/li>\n<li>For patients with heart valve disease and atrial fibrillation, it is critical that the patient\u2019s medical team evaluate many additional factors to develop a long-term treatment plan that may consider appendage size, atrium architecture and comorbidities.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3632 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/..\/Images\/atriclip-surgical-left-atrial-appendage-closure.jpg\" alt=\"AtriClip - Left Surgical Appendage Closure\" width=\"650\" height=\"361\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The LeAPPS Clinical Trial is a new clinical trial designed to determine whether closing the left appendage prophylactically is appropriate using a clip which takes about 30 seconds during open heart surgery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Many Thanks to Dr. Gerdisch &amp; Franciscan Health!<\/h2>\n<p>On behalf of our entire patient community, many thanks to Dr. Gerdisch for sharing his clinical experiences and research with our community!\u00a0 Also, many thanks to the Franciscan Health team for taking such great care of heart valve patients.<\/p>\n<p>Related links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/minimally-invasive-mitral-repair\/\">Surgeon Insights: Minimally-Invasive Mitral Valve Repair Surgery<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/different-faces-mitral-valve-disease\/\">Dr. Gerdisch Interview: The Different Faces of Mitral Valve Disease<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Marc-Gerdisch-Indianapolis-Indiana.php\">See 100+ Patient Reviews for Dr. Gerdisch<\/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 the video with Dr. Gerdisch below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"cms.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"class_list":["post-3554","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","category-atrial-fibrillation-afib"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3554"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3643,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3554\/revisions\/3643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/learning\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}