Cardiologists and cardiac surgeons at King’s College Hospital in London have started a new programme to treat patients with aortic valve stenosis (narrowings of the aortic valve). King’s staff carried out the first two successful transapical aortic valve replacements in the UK and two percutaneous aortic valve replacements.
• Percutaneous or transfemoral aortic valve replacement – where a heart valve prosthesis is implanted into the heart by a cardiologist through a leg (femoral) artery.
• Transapical aortic heart valve replacement – where a heart valve prosthesis is implanted by a cardiac surgeon using keyhole surgery through the apex of the heart.
These “keyhole” surgery techniques could benefit frailer patients considered unsuitable for open heart surgery by avoiding the risks of lengthy open surgery, which could mean thousands more UK patients could receive treatment.
The operations were carried out by a multidisciplinary team of two cardiologists, Dr Martyn Thomas and Dr Phil MacCarthy and two cardiac surgeons, Mr Ahmed El-Gamel and Mr Olaf Wendler.
Mr Wendler, consultant cardiac surgeon and clinical director for cardiology and cardiothoracic surgery at King’s said: “We are very excited by the results of these operations. All four patients were chosen for these procedures because they were considered ‘high risk’ for open heart surgery.
“Thanks to these techniques, none of the four needed to be admitted to an intensive care unit after surgery, they all recovered without complications and were ready to be discharged home only a week after surgery. As aortic valve replacement is currently the only treatment option for aortic stenosis, these new minimally-invasive procedures could potentially revolutionise treatment for patients who suffer from this condition.”
Ellen Mason, cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation (BHF) said: “We welcome this exciting clinical trial. We hope the findings will lead to these treatments becoming better established and widely available in the future for many more heart patients. The new procedure avoids open heart surgery and several hours under anaesthetic which is good news for many elderly heart patients who are often at higher-risk when undergoing surgery.”
