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TONY V. MARTIN
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t 73, Munster resident Geraldine Roman is looking at life now as a promising new start. Less than a year ago, however, life looked anything but promising. Last summer, Roman fell and broke her right femur. After having it surgically repaired at Community Hospital, she went to Munster Med Inn for rehabilitation. That’s when things got even worse. “My physical therapist decided we should take a break for the rest of the day,” Roman says. “We went to my room, by wheelchair, and as I began to recline in my bed I noticed it was increasingly difficult to breathe.” Soon after, she could barely breathe at all. Roman was transported to the hospital, where doctors diagnosed her with congestive heart failure. An angiogram revealed a 95 percent blockage to her left anterior descending coronary artery. Plans to open that blockage with angioplasty and a stent were delayed because doctors also discovered she had calcium deposits in her aortic valve—preventing the heart from pumping blood through it. “A normal valve is the size of a half-dollar, but Ms. Roman’s was smaller than a dime,” says Dr. Mark Russo, a cardiac surgeon and codirector of the Center for Aortic Diseases at the University of Chicago Medicine. “Pumping blood through a valve this size is like trying to water your lawn through a straw. There was no way for her heart to compensate.” Roman suffered from several other health ailments—from diabetes to asthma and rheumatoid arthritis—and because of this, she was not eligible for valve surgery. She also had congestive heart failure 15 years prior. Physicians decided to refer her to cardiologist Jafar AlSadir, professor of medicine
A MUNSTER WOMAN RECUPERATES FROM A CARDIAC PROCEDURE 10 | GET HEALTHY | nwi.com/gethealthy
at the University of Chicago Medicine. Al-Sadir recommended a procedure called TAVI, which is a nonsurgical approach to valve replacement in which doctors place an artificial heart valve made of cow tissue and polyester inside the damaged valve. When Roman discovered she was a candidate for transcatheter aortic-valve implantation, she says she was elated. “I knew about TAVI and had researched it online,” she says. “I was grateful to Dr. Al-Sadir for recommending me, and even more so when I was chosen.” In February, doctors performed the procedure. Although more than 45,000 transcatheter aortic-valve implantation procedures have been performed worldwide, Roman was the first patient in Chicago to undergo the procedure since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it in November. “I felt remarkable from the moment I woke up after the surgery,” she says. According to a news release from the University of Chicago Medicine, the heart valve folds up into a fraction of its functional size. The collapsed valve is then compressed for delivery and inserted into the tip of a thin catheter. This is inserted into an artery in the leg, threaded up through the aorta and down into the heart. At the site of the narrowing, the inserted valve is released from the catheter and expanded with a balloon. This pushes open the damaged valve and lodges the mechanical one within it, where it immediately starts to function. According to the release, this allows her heart to pump blood to her body normally. Because of her other health ailments, Roman says before now, she never thought about any dreams she wanted to fulfill. “I’ll have to start some heavy duty thinking now,” she says. Roman says she is sure of one thing, however—she is optimistic about what the future holds. “I am surely happier already,” she says. “With so many years ahead, maybe there’s time to find some relief for my other ailments. There are so many wonderful advancements in medicine every day.” —Christine Bryant