Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
MURRAY -- A Carbon County woman has become Utah's first patient to get a new heart valve--not through radical open chest surgery-- but simply through a small catheter inserted through her leg.
The conventional way of replacing a heart valve involves surgically opening the chest, stopping the heart and placing the patient on a heart-lung bypass machine.
At Intermountain Medical Center Monday, 87-year-old Rose Felice sat and talked to reporters only three weeks after having a valve replaced in her heart. She said, "I feel great. Thank goodness I can breathe and get around; doing things I couldn't do before."
Surgeons snaked a special catheter from an artery in her leg up into the heart. Once there, the new valve on the end of the catheter was deployed like a little inflatable balloon. Anchored in place, the stainless steel valve with tissue leaflets restored one-way blood flow.
Intermountain Medical Center cardiologist Brian Whisenant said, "This was incredibly exciting. You know one of my colleagues who couldn't be here today, Dr. Horton, came out saying this is the most exciting thing he's experienced in his career."
Instead of a four or five hour open-chest surgery with a stopped heart, the beat goes on the whole time. For most patients, the procedure takes only an hour.
Rose was awake and talking to nurses and doctors minutes after it ended. Rose's daughter Delores Slavensky said, "I can't even believe this. I don't think I could ever do it, but I'll tell you this lady is amazing. She was amazing the day after she got out."
Before her heart valve replacement, Rose got so tired she couldn't even eat. She recalled, "I got tired eating. I would put a spoonful of food in my mouth and I couldn't chew it because my mouth was tired. I couldn't chew it. I just got to the point where I couldn't even eat." She said the surgery has made a big difference. She said, "Now they have to hide it [food] from me."
Rose is among more than a thousand heart valve patients participating in this study. IMC is one of only 25 medical centers in the U.S., Canada and Europe involved in the pioneering clinical trial.
E-mail: eyeates@ksl.com
