John Toftegaard week 5

 This week I again was mostly based in the cardiac catheter lab and I got to see a pretty unique valve replacement. I was able to watch a self expanding aortic valve replacement. The normal aortic valve replacement requires that the doctor expand the metal valve with a balloon which gives a lot more control to the doctor, but also introduces another variable they need to include in the procedure. This particular valve is of a newer model valve and is constructed from a nitinol mesh that expands on its own once deployed in the body. The first portion of this procedure was very similar to other TAVR procedures where the guides were placed inside the heart to allow for proper positioning. Once the guides are placed they were double checked and then the valve was deployed. In this situation that’s all that is down and the procedure is pretty much over. The doctors checked up on the blood dynamic in the patient to ensure everything was deployed correctly. Since this valve will continue to expand for a but they will follow up later in the month to make sure further expansion doesn’t interfere.

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