A New Hope for Cardiac Patients
A team of Jordanian cardiologist and cardiac surgeons lead by Dr. Imad Alhaddad had implanted aortic heart valves using cardiac catheterization technique without traditional open heart surgery at Jordan Hospital as the first of its kind in the region.
Dr. Alhaddad, cardiovascular consultant and interventionalist and the former director of cardiology-vascular services at Johns Hopkins University-USA stated that heart valves diseases can weaken the heart muscle and thus leading to heart failure and death. Traditional open heart surgery was considered the only effective treatment for those patients for many years. However, open heart surgery usually takes several hours and is associated with significant risks including death, stroke and others in addition to long hospitalization, particularly in patients with chronic illnesses and advanced heart disease.
The new technique according to Dr. Alhaddad involves mounting the prosthetic valve on a balloon then advancing the device through a small incision over the groin and placing it inside the diseased valve. The new valve is fixed in its place by inflating-deflating and then removing the balloon. The procedure was performed on 2 patients; the first 73 year old lady from Palestine and the other is a 74 year old man from Egypt. Both had successful implantation of the aortic valve, cured of their valve disorder and left the hospital within 48hrs after the procedure.
The significance of this innovation as per Dr. Alhaddad is its high success rate in addition to lower risks, shorter hospitalization and avoidance of open heart surgery. The new technique has the potential to help thousands of patients in the region and many more around the world and may expand to involve other cardiac valves. Trans-catheter valve implantation may ultimately become the preferred treatment for most patients with valvular heart disease.
Dr. Alhaddad emphasized that the new innovation mandate a highly experienced operators and advanced medical facilities that are only available in selected medical institutions around the world and we at Jordan Hospital are proud to be among those providing this technology.
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