Kay's Heart Story
Kay Rodrick's active life was slipping away.
She was struggling to breathe, even to move around in her home. The 78-year-old was having to rely on oxygen every minute of the day. This wasn't the world she had worked so hard for to have.
Kay, who retired just a year ago wanted her health to improve, just as she did 10 years ago when she had to have a valve replaced during open heart surgery. Now, with her breath so labored, Kay's cardiologist wondered if her medical history was repeating itself.
Under the advice from her physician, Kay saw a doctor at Abrazo Arrowhead Campus in Glendale. There, she underwent an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart) and tests on her lungs and her heart.
The diagnosis? Aortic stenosis.
Because her valve was closing, her heart was having to pump harder to move blood through the body and that's why she was fighting to breathe.
But there was good news. She wouldn't have to endure open heart surgery again. Abrazo Arrowhead had a new alternative.
Kay became a candidate for Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement(TAVR), a minimally invasive, advanced heart procedure for patients suffering from severe aortic stenosis. During the procedure, the TAVR medical team implants a replacement valve into a patient's heart through a thin flexible tube (catheter) that holds the replacement valve. The team uses special imaging equipment to guide and position the valve into place.
In August, the doctors at Abrazo Arrowhead’s Heart Murmur Clinic used an artery in Kay's leg to deliver, open and repair the valve that had been replaced 10 years before.
With that, Kay became one of the Abrazo Arrowhead Campus's first valve replacement patients to have the TAVR procedure.
Within two weeks, Kay felt she got her life back.
For more health information, go to http://www.AbrazoHealth.com