Helping Heart Patients

(An article from the 201health.net website)

New cardiac surgery procedure has benefits

Physicians at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center are now using a new procedure that allows them to perform mitral valve repair surgery without the need for large chest incisions. Englewood Hospital is the only health care facility in the metropolitan New Jersey/New York region to offer the full platform of this innovative procedure.

“This procedure is much less invasive than traditional surgery but still allows our team to perform all standard mitral valve repairs,” says Dr. Jock N. McCullough, who now repairs more than 90 percent of all non-rheumatic mitral valve cases at the medical center. “Patients can often return home after only a few days and resume many normal activities within a couple of weeks.”

Traditional “open-heart” surgery typically requires that a doctor saw through a patient’s sternum to reach the heart. Recovery time can often take several months and patients are left with a large scar down the middle of their chest. With this new minimally invasive procedure, doctors at Englewood Hospital and Medical Center are able to reach the heart through a small two and one half inch incision between the ribs to repair or replace damaged heart valves.

Heart valve disease is a common affliction and approximately 95,000 Americans must undergo surgery to repair damaged heart valves each year. For patients undergoing minimally invasive surgery, the benefits include significantly improved post-operative healing time. The average recovery time is two weeks compared to 6-8 weeks with traditional surgery. In addition, patients experience less pain and scarring.

Common tests to detect heart valve disease include chest X-ray, electrocardiogram, echocardiogram and blood tests. If left untreated, some heart valve problems can result in a life-threatening infection or death.

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