Video Story
Watch VideoHeart valve replacement without open-heart surgery
Story By: Bea Karnes
Source: NBC
Doctors at the University of Miami in Florida are now replacing heart valves without traditional surgery, offering patients a faster and easier recovery.
Harold Schoendorf and Kenneth Horstmyer are both in their 80s and both underwent aortic valve replacement. "The next morning both of these guys are sitting up reading the newspaper asking when can they go home," said Cardiologist Alan Heldman.
Their remarkably quick recoveries are due to an investigational and promising new procedure. "What we are doing is a new method of pushing the old valve aside and putting the new valve inside the old valve so that heart surgery is not necessary and so they don't have to have open heart surgery with the chest open and they don't have to be placed on cardiac bypass," explained Cardiologist William O’Neill.
Both men had severe aortic stenosis, which is a common problem in the elderly.
"I was extremely fatigued and that was the issue with me, the tiredness," said Horstmyer.
"If I exerted myself in any way physically, two flights of stairs would do it, with groceries, forget it," said Schoendorf
In a two hour long procedure, under general anesthesia, through a small incision in the leg, a balloon is threaded into the heart to open the diseased valve, then another catheter is used to put this device in place.
"The new device is inside the old valve that the patient was born with," said Dr. Heldman.
For now this is only being tested in patients for whom tradition valve surgery would be too risky.
Dr. William O'Neill was the first to perform this procedure in the United States. "It's still too early to say that this is going to be a replacement for heart surgery, but we expect that probably within 10 years most patients with aortic stenosis are going to be treated with this procedure rather than valve replacement surgery," said O’Neill.
The valve has not been approved by the FDA. Researchers hope to have approval in 3 to 5 years.
