Doctor from Vancouver set to change treatment for heart ailment

Efforts of a doctor from Vancouver may change the way heart ailments are treated.   Cardiologist Dr. David Wood with Vancouver General Hospital studied 411 patients who had this procedure and gave his results to thousands of doctors in Denver, CO, at the Transcatheter Cardiovascular Therapeutics conference and said that despite the development of his new technique the open heart surgery can’t be dispensed away with.  The new procedure is called 3M transcatheter aortic valve replacement and is directed for treating aortic heart valve disease.

He explained that instead of opening up a patient’s chest and cutting into their heart, in this procedure a small tube the size of a pinkie finger is put into the into leg and sends a balloon into the heart’s valve. As people get older, the heart’s main valve gets narrower, giving less blood to the brain and limbs and “The new valve immediately starts working normally, you get twice as much blood going to your head, your lungs, your body,” he said. He said that patients who go through this surgery awake without a breathing tube, catheter, long hospital stays, or exposing a vital organ. “The procedure typically takes now about 45 minutes, with just a little bit of sedation to make your comfortable,” he says. “You’re walking four hours later, and you’re discharged the next day.”

High and intermediate-risk patients averaging around 80 patients could have this procedure done in Canada and Wood hopes it can be extended to low-risk patients in a couple years.