Webcast of Ross Procedure on 10/26

[PapaHappyStar]

Congested again -- shucks -- think he was taking strips out of the pulmonary area to implant in the autograft??? add to the elastic tissue in the aorta??? This guys aorta was not dilated -- when it is they cut out some of it. Beautiful new aortic valve !!!!

 

[PapaHappyStar]

Online Question: Does the thinness of the pulmonary artery compared to the aortic cause long-term effects.

Answer ( Stelzer ):
a) dont take too much of the aorta out (3 cm vs 5??)
b) incorporate support

Use Judgement.

Asked is their a chance of dying..

Stezer: Me or the patient

 

[PapaHappyStar]

World's third largest series of Ross -- the other two are by retired surgeons.

Wow -- I though Sir M. Yacoub had more...

Mortality is around 1.5% for Dr. Stelzer. He says hes learned to judge from experience. He has learned from doing this many times -- and since 99? hasnt lost anyone.

Candidates for the ross slide 10

 

[PapaHappyStar]

Advantages:

 

[PapaHappyStar]

6-8 weeks before normal activity -- no rejection problems for the homograft ( not impossible but very uncommon )

 

[PapaHappyStar]

view of the homograft, they are going to use excess tissue to shore up the donor valve in the pulmonary position, they are trimming it -- 47 year old donor, they try to match the size mostly, the largest size they had ( get him to play hockey again, big tall fella -- Stelzer )

 

[PapaHappyStar]

Question: Hospital stay and recovery

Ans: 4 days -- one stayed for 3. Airplane travel after a week.

He talked about women he's done the Ross on ( backed away a bit clumsily from taking full responsibilty for children born after the Ross )

Youngest patient: 17 years -- regulated from doing pediatric at beth israel??

 

[PapaHappyStar]

First Ross procedure in 1967:

The idea was the pulmonary threw a clot it would go to the lung instead of the brain and the pulmonary valve is not as critical as the valves on the workhose side .

 

[PapaHappyStar]

Optimistically -- according to Stelzer -- the Ross can last upto 40 yrs.

Live broadcast has ended -- looking at a patient from a week ago looks like he got through very fine.

Superb work.

 

[PapaHappyStar]

My thoughts:

I was a bit disappointed in the length of the broadcast itself -- they didnt have time for preliminaries and a summary.

Dr. Stelzer is a superb surgeon and highly experienced, I would have no qualms about having him do my Ross Procedure.

 

[dcpickle]

That last patient was me, I guess! So far I AM doing fine! Quite fascinating!

David

 

[PapaHappyStar]

David,
Happy to see you -- now I really know your heart!!!
Hows everything coming along for you.
Burair

 

[dcpickle]

Actually, I was not the one shown at the beginning (I don't think) I believe it was a guy with whom I've made friends (He's from my hometown and works where I used to work) but at the end, the shot of the beating heart right before being closed up I thought might be me because he said it was "a couple of weeks ago" and the other guy's RP was September 9. So, it may or may not have been me. But, I was Dr. Stelzer's previous RP.

At any rate, the webcast was quite fascinating, and Dr. Stelzer is an amazing surgeon!

David

 

[sylviayasgur]

hey, james..
thanks so much for that.... i missed it this morning and just watched the whole thing....excellent!!!

dr. stelzer is truly a God in our book. cannot recommend him highly enough.
AND, yes, he was there to check on joey from start to finish... such a nice man... told us all about how he got into medicine, etc.

thanks again and hope you're all well,
sylvia

 

[Mary]

Golly Burair.
I'm glad you did that! Bob couldn't get it at the hospital; computers there didn't have something needed to show the broadcast.
I just read your posts aloud to him; and I guess he will try to watch a replay from home.
It makes me very comfortable to know Dr. Stelzer is doing my surgery and very relaxed knowing no patient has died since 99.
Thanks for the play-by-play!
Mary

 

[PapaHappyStar]

Golly Burair.
Thanks for the play-by-play!
Mary

I feel a bit weird because I actually enjoyed that -- did I miss my calling.....

Perhaps surgeons are not too different from experimental scientists, ( no one's life depends, literally anyway, on the judgement of scientists -- except in sci-fi mostly -- but the work is pretty exacting and precise at times and the level of concentration needed is comparable sometimes )

Was fun ( now I just have to carry that attitude into the surgery... )