UAB is the first facility in Alabama to offer a new procedure for replacing heart valves. And it doesn't require opening the chest cavity.
"I'm looking forward to fishing this fall. I've got a nice pond full of catfish and blue gills,"
If he didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't guess Charles Estes just had heart surgery. This 89 year old World War II veteran, says he feels better than he has in a long time.
"Before the surgery I had very limited movement because I was breathing so fast and it was getting worse," said Estes.
His heart was the source of his symptoms. Estes had symptomatic aortic stenosis, a condition usually caused by calcium buildup on the aortic valve. Because of his age, he was not a candidate for traditional open-heart surgery.
But there was another option. The catch? Estes would be the first person in Alabama to undergo this procedure.
"He called me and said he wanted to talk to me so I went. What he told me sounded good," said Estes.
"The term is Trans catheter aortic valve replacement. You go through the groin and through the arteries in the groin and go up with a catheter and you replace the valve so that way you don't remove the old valve you just push it out of the way and replace it with the valve in the groin," said Doctor James Davies.
Davies says TAVR has been used for many years in Europe, and tested in 20 centers in the U.S. Since 2006. The food and drug administration approved it in November 2011. Heart surgeons at UAB quickly added it to their repertoire.
"We felt like UAB offered the most cardiovascular care and we felt like we should be the first ones to do this," said Davies.
Estes was all for it.
"Either way it was a win situation. If I died I would go to heaven. If I lived I would go Hackleburg," said Davies.
"I think that he was the optimal patient. When we presented him at our conference in new York for the procedure they actually commented that this was the perfect first start patient," said Davies.
Estes is tickled at the thought of making history in the world of medicine.
"I'm amazed at that. But I'm glad it happened you know. I believe I would recommend this to anybody who had a problem like I had," said Estes.
The American Heart Association says nearly 1.5 million people in the U.S. Suffer from severe hardening or narrowing of the aortic valve.
Doctor Davies says this is only the beginning. There will be similar procedures for various other heart valve diseases. Davies says open heart surgery is still the "gold standard" of heart surgery. He says overall, the mortality rate is about 1 percent.
