| Deborah the Only Hospital in the State using TandemHeart Procedure | |||
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Deborah Doctors Introduce Innovative Procedures Not once, but twice, Deborah doctors recently debuted brand-new cutting-edge technology at the hospital. In back-to-back procedures doctors Christine Gasperetti, Se Do Cha, Gabor Winkler, and Arthur Ng have put Deborah in the center of the leading wave of new advances. Dr Gasperetti, assisted by Doctors Anderson and Cha, performed a TandemHeart procedure – making Deborah the only hospital in the state using this technique. TandemHeart is a device that sits on a patient’s thigh and is wired through a catheter, acting like a second heart during angioplasty pumping about 85 percent of the patient’s blood, and cutting the risk for patients while offering options for those too sick to undergo surgery and other treatments. Doctors Winkler and Ng performed an endovascular thoracic aneurysm repair with a stent graft, making Deborah the only facility in South Jersey to do this procedure, and only the third in the Delaware Valley. Instead of a traditional thoracic repair requiring a major operation, the two doctors used a catheter to feed a special plastic-coated stent to the aneurysm. The procedure circumvented partial bypass, a cut to the chest cavity, and significant patient recovery time. |
December 21, 2005 – On Friday, interventional cardiologist Dr. Christine Gasperetti of Deborah Heart and Lung Center in Browns Mills, NJ made local medical history when she performed an angioplasty on Joseph Genovese of East Windsor, using a brand-new device called TandemHeart. Deborah is the only hospital in New Jersey currently doing this procedure. TandemHeart is an ingenious device that makes it possible for people like Genovese who are considered too high risk for traditional heart surgery, to undergo an angioplasty safely. In angioplasty, a balloon-tipped coil is inserted into an artery through a thin plastic tube (a catheter). The balloon is then inflated to break plaque and clear blockages. The TandemHeart device is a mini-pump that sits on the patient’s thigh. Catheters run through the skin and into the heart allowing the pump to take over about 85 percent of the heart’s pumping function while the doctor is performing an angioplasty and putting stents, or wire mesh tubing that braces arteries open, in place. For a patient like Genovese, the device was a life-saving innovation. “This procedure can be used for high-risk angioplasty patients,” said Dr. Gasperetti. “It significantly broadens the spectrum of patients who might otherwise not be candidates for revascularization.” During traditional angioplasty blood flow in the heart is momentarily stopped. For low-risk patients this usually presents no problem. But for someone like Genovese, who had a double-bypass in 1997, a TMR (transmyocardial revascularization) in 2001, and now had three blockages in his heart, one of which stopped 90 percent of the blood flow in his left main artery, he was not considered a candidate for another surgery. With the thin tubes in Genovese’s heart pumping his blood, Dr. Gasperetti had a safety back-up while she did three procedures in succession: a “kissing” balloon angioplasty inflation to make room for the stents, the insertion of drug-coated stents simultaneously into two branching pathways off the left main artery using “kissing” stent technique, and a further high pressure balloon inflation to further expand the stents. The procedure was all done within two hours. Genovese was off the pump -- his “tandem” or second heart -- within three hours. |
As soon as the sedation wore off Genovese immediately began feeling better with the massive blockage in his artery gone. “I’ve seen tremendous improvement,” he said. “I was feeling so sick. I couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs. Now I look great and I feel better." Genovese, who left the hospital on Monday, was looking forward to taking walks again with his wife Carole and having more energy to play with his grandchildren. “This procedure gives you more time,” said Dr. Gasperetti “and it increases the safety for high–risk patients, as well as extending the services we are able to offer. I see a lot of other potential uses for this.” A significant number of high risk patients will now have the opportunity to benefit from this new, minimally invasive procedure, both in the cath lab as well as in the operating room. It’s really quite exciting. |
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