Angela Canlas lives in Nevada, but when she was diagnosed with a heart
murmur, her cardiologist said that if she were his daughter, there’s
only one doctor he’d send her to and she’d have to head to
Newport Beach.
Leaving Nevada to receive
mitral valve repair surgery wasn’t easy for Angela. It meant she had to miss her son’s
first few weeks of first grade. It meant a hospital stay in a community
that wasn’t her own. But, she knew that coming to Hoag to undergo
the procedure also meant expert care by one of the world’s most
experienced mitral valve repair surgeons,
Aidan A. Raney, M.D., James & Pamela Muzzy Endowed Chair in Cardiovascular Surgery.
Given the difficulty of the decision and the enormity of the surgery, Angela
still cries when she talks about it one year later. But she is relieved
that she received robotic-assisted mitral valve repair surgery at
Hoag’s Jeffrey M. Carlton Heart & Vascular Institute.
“While they were doing the surgery, they found a hole in my heart
that I apparently was born with, so they closed that up, too,” said
Angela, 50. “My heart is completely fine now. I am so grateful.”
Angela no longer gasps for breath when she speaks, she can chase her 7-year-old
son around without raising her heart rate to dangerous levels and her
heart murmur is gone.
Dr. Raney, medical director of cardiovascular surgery at Hoag, is a leader
in minimally-invasive techniques that allow patients to undergo major
surgeries with minimal incisions and much easier recovery periods. For
Angela’s surgery, Dr. Raney made three tiny incisions in her side
utilizing special instruments to perform her mitral valve repair.
Pravin Shah, M.D., an internationally renowned pioneer of echocardiography, performed 3D
echocardiography (a highly advanced ultrasound of the heart) on Angela
to ensure the best possible outcome.
Although the American College of Cardiology recommends this approach to
mitral valve regurgitation when appropriate, too few surgeons have enough
experience to perform the intricate surgery. Instead, many patients undergo
an open-chest surgery to replace the valve, not repair it, and are left
with a six-inch scar afterward.
“You can’t even see it,” Angela said, of the incisions.
Hoag’s well-earned reputation for patient care and positive outcomes
means that people like Angela come to Hoag from across the country expecting
expert treatment. What they don’t expect is the high level of personal
care that comes with it.
“From the time I got there for pre-op, to my surgery and my entire
stay, through the very last moment, everyone was so nice and sweet and
kind,” Angela said. “I thought, ‘Everybody here is just
outstanding.’”
Mitral valve repair patient Jenny Murphy agrees. It has been 10 years since
Jenny, now 35, left the Bay Area to undergo surgery with Drs. Raney and
Shah at Hoag, and she says the quality of the surgery and commitment of
the staff has her singing the hospital’s praises even after a decade.
“I work in the medical field, so when I’m in a medical situation
I tend to manage things and make sure they go OK,” said Jenny, a
pharmacist now living in Bend, Oregon with her husband and three children.
“At Hoag, the care is so comprehensive and the medical team is so
attentive that I could just lie back and heal. I didn’t have to
manage anything because they know what they’re doing. As a patient,
you feel safe.”
For more information, call 888-375-4003.