Dr. Oz: Heart Disease
Dr. Oz shared the story of a surgery he performed on a man named Charles. Charles has battled heart disease for 20 years. Charles said he was never very athletic, but he did do light exercise, like golf and walking. Now, he gets very tired easily. It got a little bit worse at a time. Now, he’s waiting for an operation to fix it.
Dr. Oz talked about a man named Charles who suffered from aortic stenosis and who Dr. Oz attempted to save in the operating room with a valve surgery. (Gunnar Assmy / Shutterstock.com)
20 years ago, Charles had bypass surgery to circumvent five blocked coronary arteries. Now, his aortic valve is failing and needs to be replaced.
Dr. Oz: Aortic Valve Surgery
Charles has been married to his wife Marilyn for 30 years. Marilyn does not handle surgery well. It was obvious from the way she handled herself and her reactions to what was happening. Charles said he had faith the doctors would do a good job. Marilyn, on the other hand, was a wreck. She had good reason to be. Her first husband died after major surgery. She got the phone call in the middle of the night. Marilyn said she was going to stand by Charles through this and see him through it. “I will not bury a second husband,” she said.
Dr. Oz explained to Charles and Marilyn that normally, a heart squeezes 70 percent of the blood that comes to it, passing it along to the rest of the body. Charles’s heart was greedy. It was only passing on 15 percent of the blood. The reason for that is because the valve was so tight nothing could get through it. Dr. Oz said he needed to change the valve. But with the prior operation Charles had, it made fixing the valve a little more complicated. Dr. Oz explained to a very nervous Marilyn that this is a surgery he could never guarantee success of, but he could guarantee her that it was his best shot at surviving and thriving.
To make Marilyn even more nervous, she’s a retired nurse. She knows a lot of the things that could go wrong. Between her professional experience and personal experience, that’s a recipe for some extreme anxiety.
Dr. Oz: What is Aortic Stenosis?
Charles’s condition is called Aortic Stenosis. The heart’s job is to pump blood out through the aortic valve. Over time, as we get older or for other reasons, the aortic valve gets calloused and doesn’t open right. This makes the heart work a lot harder and stresses the heart. This can be very dangerous for the body. This can lead to shortness of breath and dizziness.
This is a common problem as people get older. In the operating room, after fixing the aortic valve problem, they let Charles rest in the operating room, letting the heart rest as well. This let them be able to take him off the heart and lung machine. So it sounds like Marilyn can rest easy. Charles was okay after all.
jan carder says
How would a person make an appointment to see dr.oz Is there a way that you would not have to crack the chest to do this aortic stenosis?
Janet Underwood says
I had aortic valve replacement surgery just a few weeks ago here in Kansas City. Like many people, I thought my very slight shortness of breath was caused by lack of exercise and getting older (I’m 66). I also had some swelling of my ankles but that’s nothing new. And a little dizziness when I first got out of bed, but again, nothing that I thought was significant. I was taken by surprise when I was told I had stenosis of the aortic valve. I think this can be a very deceptive condition. The symptoms come on slowly and become “normal” to you, so probably a lot of people are like me and think that they’re “just” getting old. I think the word needs to go out and general practitioners need to encourage patients to report symptoms, no matter how trivial the patients think they are. As it turned out, my aortic valve was opening less than .6 cm. When I was finally able to meet with the cardiac surgeon, he said that my stenosis was the worst of the day and got me scheduled for surgery within a few days. Mind you, all along, I really thought I was feeling fine. My cardiologist told me at my appointment following the surgery that I was perhaps within days and definitely within a few weeks of dropping over dead.
By the way, the silver lining this cloud was learning from all of the tests done prior to the surgery that I have no artery disease and aside from the muscle being thickened in the left ventricle (due to having to pump so hard to push the blood through the aorta — but that should return to normal now that I have a good valve in there), my heart and arteries look great!
On another note, Dr. Oz, would you please tell Dr. Fowler hello from me? He treated my diverticulitis and used his laparoscopic procedure to do a colon resection on me about 20 years ago. My cardiologist was interested in him when I told him about Dr. Fowler developing that procedure and how I was one of the early ones to have it performed on me, so I looked him up on the Internet and lo and behold, found out that he’s the Vice President and Medical Director for Perioperative Services at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center. I appreciate both how he took such good care of me AND understood my curiosity.