MINSK, 10 January (BelTA) – Doctors of the Interventional Radiology Suite of the National Teaching Medical Center have performed a minimally invasive aortic valve replacement surgery on a 78-year-old patient for the first time, BelTA learned from the press service of the Healthcare Ministry.
According to the hospital chief Irina Abelskaya, the surgery was performed using Edwards SAPIEN 3 Transcatheter Heart Valve System on a patient with a severe aortic stenosis. The operation took place on 26 December 2019.
The patient was given local anesthesia. The catheter was inserted through the femoral artery in the leg. The surgery lasted 130 minutes, while a traditional open-heart surgery in this case takes 300-360 minutes. Four days after the surgery the patient was discharged from hospital with a good outlook. The pressure gradient dropped from 74 down to 6 mmHg across the aortic valve.
Aortic stenosis is a narrowing of the aortic valve that restricts blood flow to aorta, the body's main artery. It is mostly developed in elderly people. Epidemiological studies have determined that more than one in eight people aged 75 and older have moderate or severe aortic stenosis. The classic triad of symptoms of aortic stenosis include dyspnea, syncope, and angina.
Once symptoms of severe aortic stenosis occur, over half of patients die within two years if the diseased valve is not replaced. Unfortunately, 30-40% of patients are not considered to be appropriate for a traditional open-heart surgery for a number of reasons.
The only solution is a transcatheter aortic valve implantation (TAVI). It is a preferable method of treatment for patients over 75 years who have a high risk for surgical therapy, who have developed severe conditions or diseases and chest deformity, and patients who had heart surgeries before. Long-term outcomes of TAVI are at least as good as those of an open-heart surgery. The benefits of minimalist TAVI include less intraprocedural haemodynamic perturbation from general anesthesia, shorter ICU and hospital stays and earlier patient ambulation.
