A NEW Heart Procedure Offered Locally: Valvuloplasty
Stiff Heart Valves Opened Through Valvuloplasty Procedure at Lawnwood’s Heart and Vascular Institute, Reducing the need for Open-Heart Surgery

There are many ways our body’s largest muscle, the heart, can become diseased. Arteries can become narrowed or blocked. Heart rhythm problems can develop. Infections and congenital heart problems (those you’re born with) can cause disease. Valves, which keep the blood flowing forward during its journey through the heart, can become damaged or diseased. 

When this happens, they may not function properly. One of these conditions involving the heart valves is called valvular stenosis. In simple terms, one or more of the heart’s valves has become stiff, causing the heart muscle to work harder to pump the blood through the valve.

Reasons Heart Valves Become Stiff

• Infection (such as rheumatic fever or staphylococcus infections)
• Aging

If one or more valves become insufficient (leaky), blood leaks backwards, which means that less blood is pumped in the proper direction.

Symptoms of Valvular Heart Disease

• dizziness
• chest pain
• breathing difficulties
• palpitations
• edema (swelling) of the feet, ankles, or abdomen
• rapid weight gain due to fluid retention

Valvuloplasty – A Procedure that Can Help

Lawnwood’s Heart and Vascular Institute’s Cardiologist, Dr. Prasad Chalisani, is the only cardiologist in the region to offer a procedure called valvuloplasty. It is a procedure that can be performed in certain situations to open a heart valve that has become stiff as a result of disease or the aging process. Not all conditions in which a heart valve becomes stiff are treatable with valvuloplasty. There may be other reasons for your physician to recommend a valvuloplasty.

“Before you had to travel as far as Miami or Orlando to get this level of care.” Dr Chalisani said, “Now we are able to serve our patients right here with less invasive, preventative surgery, that gives patients another option to an open-heart procedure.”

The valvuloplasty procedure involves advancing a very small, narrow, hollow tube, or catheter from a blood vessel in the groin through the aorta into the heart. Once the catheter is placed in the valve to be opened, a large balloon at the tip of the catheter is inflated until the leaflets (flaps) of the valve are opened. Once the valve has been opened, the balloon is deflated and the catheter is removed.

Other related procedures that may be used to assess and treat the heart at Lawnwood include resting and exercise electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG), Holter monitor, signal-averaged ECG, cardiac catheterization, chest x-ray, computed tomography (CT scan) of the chest, coronary artery bypass graft surgery, valve repair/replacement surgery, echocardiography, electrophysiological studies, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the heart, myocardial perfusion scans, radionuclide angiography, and ultrafast CT scan.

If you need a referral to a physician or would like more information about cardiac services offered at Lawnwood, call 1-800-382-3522.