Patient Treated with Heart Valve Replacement Discharged

A 78-year-old female patient in Ankara who had a heart valve disease and whose heart surgery carried a serious risk of death was treated by replacing her heart valve with a needle inserted into her body from the groin area using the ‘Tricvalve’ procedure. Cardiology and Structural Heart Diseases Specialist Prof. Dr. Erdoğan İlkay said, “This was the 5th or 6th case in our country. We performed a new valve placement procedure on our patient, the largest vein in the chest and abdomen called the ‘Vena Cava Superior’, which collects blood from the upper region of the abdomen with the vein coming from the lower region of the abdomen.”

In a hospital in Ankara, a female patient whose mitral valve, one of the four valves that allow blood to flow in the right direction in the heart, had previously been replaced was admitted for treatment after the same complaints were also seen in the tricuspid valve. Prof. Dr. Erdoğan İlkay and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ersin Sarıçam, who work as Interventional Cardiology and Structural Heart Disease specialists, undertook the patient’s treatment. In the examinations, it was evaluated that the heart surgery had a high risk of death due to the patient’s age and illnesses. The doctors resorted to the ‘Tricvalve’ procedure, which has recently started to be applied in Turkey. With this method, a needle is inserted into the patient’s body from the groin area, and the heart valve located in the vein that passes through the abdomen and reaches the heart is replaced. After the successful intervention, the patient regained her health within 2 days and was discharged from the hospital.

‘WE DID NOT HAVE A SERIOUS ALTERNATIVE’

Prof. Dr. Erdoğan İlkay, stating that the patient had a severe leakage in the valve on the right side of his heart, said, “We call this Tricuspid valve leakage. In other valve leakages or valve stenosis, we have been performing Mitral valve replacements for years by entering from the groin. However, unfortunately, we did not have a serious alternative other than surgery for this Tricuspid valve leakage in the right heart. Because the procedure we call TriClip (non-surgical heart valve repair) does not give good results in the Tricuspid valve as it does in the Mitral valve. Patients who did not have a surgical alternative were forced to continue their lives with constant swelling, edema, fluid accumulation in the abdomen called ascites, and severe edema in the legs. However, this treatment has been applied for approximately 2 years and its results have been shown to provide clinical improvement. It was the 5th or 6th case in our country for our patient. We performed the procedure of placing a new valve in the largest vein in the chest and abdomen called ‘Vena Cava Superior’, which collects blood from the upper region, using the vein coming from the lower abdomen. “This is based on the method of doing it through the groin, without opening the chest. In this way, the leakage from the right side of the heart to the back is prevented from leaking to the upper side or the lower part of the body,” he said.

‘HE WAS A PATIENT WHO HAD NO CHANCE OF UNDERGOING SURGERY’

Prof. Dr. Erdoğan, who noted that the veins coming from the arm and neck and the liver vein should not be blocked during the procedure, said, “There are very subtle points to the procedure we performed on the patient. With this treatment method, we have gained the opportunity to increase the patients’ quality of life. We performed the procedure on Monday and discharged our patient on Wednesday. It is also very important that he was discharged very quickly. This patient’s chance of having surgery is not low, he was a patient who did not have a chance of having surgery. Because this group of patients is usually a group of patients with a high mortality rate in surgery, we choose this treatment method appropriately.”