Your Health: A new way to treat bad heart valves

Your Health: A new way to treat bad heart valves
We all have four heart valves that keep our blood circulating in the right direction.

If those valves don’t work properly, blood flow is restricted, which can lead to heart failure, blood clots and stroke. For the first time in the United States, surgeons have replaced three ailing heart valves in one minimally invasive procedure.

People with heart valve disease may have hardened or leaking valves and feel fine at first, but, eventually, they may have shortness of breath, fatigue, lightheadedness or even chest pains. Surgeons have used endoscopic procedures to repair one or two valves, but three has traditionally been an open procedure.

“It’s a major surgery -- not only because of the central incision -- but because we need a cardiopulmonary bypass,” said Dr. Tommaso Hinna Danesi. “And we need to arrest the heart to work inside the heart.”

Danesi has operated on three valves through a one-inch incision, replacing a patient’s aortic and mitral valves and repairing her tricuspid valve. Doctors said the endoscopic approach reduced the surgical time by as much as 50% and allowed them to keep the patients’ heart beating during surgery.

“If you think, to an elderly and fragile patient, more gentle surgical access might be the difference between being alive or dead from an operation,” said Danesi. “It’s a big advantage.”

Heart valve disease can have a congenital cause or can be caused by infection or degeneration over time.