Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center’s Heart Center has been among the first in Florida to offer percutaneous transfemoral aortic valve replacement (TAVR) for patients with aortic stenosis. It is now the first in the region to have performed 100 TAVR procedures.
“As with any surgical procedure, the more experience a physician and the support team have performing it, the better and safer the outcomes for patients,” said Avinash Khanna, MD, Co-Director of the Heart Center. “This minimally invasive procedure can significantly improve recovery times for patients.”
While open-heart aortic valve replacement surgery is the standard treatment for severe symptomatic aortic stenosis, there are patients who are either high risk or are not good candidates for open surgery. These patients may be unable to undergo traditional surgery because of factors such as age, history of heart disease, frailty or other health issues. For these patients, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, may be an option. The TAVR procedure allows physicians to replace a diseased aortic valve without open-heart surgery. This procedure enables the placement of a heart valve into the body with a catheter, which allows the valve to be inserted through a small incision in an artery.
Dr. Andres Medina, Dr. Douglas G. Ebersole and Dr. Khanna are specially trained in performing TAVR procedures at our Heart Center.
“We are so fortunate to have cardiologists and cardiothoracic surgeons who are specially skilled and highly experienced in performing TAVR procedures,” said Mark H. Mines, MD, Co-Director of the Heart Center. “Patients should have peace of mind and confidence knowing they can trust their heart to our experienced physicians.”
TAVR was approved in 2011, initially for use in patients who were too sick to have standard surgery. As more research became available, the procedure was approved for use in patients who were at high risk for conventional surgical aortic valve replacement. Recently, trials in intermediate-risk patients have shown that TAVR is equivalent, and possibly superior, to surgical aortic valve replacement. These findings have now opened the door to trials in low-risk patients who, according to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, make up about 80% of patients with aortic stenosis.