The Cardiac Surgery UOC, the Hemodynamics and Interventional Cardiology UOC and the Pediatric Cardiology UOC are involved.
The surgical procedure was performed in a hybrid room.
The 59-year-old patient, transferred to Padua from another hospital for severe heart failure, presented a very complex clinical picture. There was a surgical contraindication due to the very high risk of bleeding, but at the same time there was no availability in the world of adequate pulmonary valves for percutaneous replacement. Furthermore, the patient had already undergone the correction of a congenital heart disease as a child. With the green light of the Company’s Ethics Committee and the authorization of the Ministry of Health, the procedure is planned.
The surgical approach must be microinvasive and hybrid to reduce risks. Traditional open chest cardiac surgery with very high risk of bleeding was unsustainable. The traditional percutaneous valve had to be adapted to the patient’s anatomy. Consultation is requested from the Cardiology Department of the Philadelphia Hospital.
The operation is performed with a beating heart without the use of extracorporeal circulation and without stopping the heart simply with a 5 cm minithoracotomy.
The patient, who remained in intensive care for 5 days always breathing spontaneously and without pharmacological support, is finally able to do daily gestures that were previously impossible: such as tying his shoes, breathing effortlessly, walking without getting tired.
A success, this one from Padua, which can be explained in four words: expertise, multimodality imaging, cutting-edge infrastructure, integration of professionalism.
