Dr. Deepak Hooda touts the benefits of the TAVR procedure at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.

Dr. Deepak Hooda, an interventional cardiologist and director of the structural heart program at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital, said it was always a horrible feeling to tell a patient needing an aortic valve replacement that they couldn’t have the procedure. In the past, the only option was open heart surgery, and the patient was in such a condition that they wouldn’t survive the surgery itself.

Yet another procedure, transcatheter aortic valve replacement, came along, giving high-risk patients the ability to have the surgery, saving hundreds more lives in the process. WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital recently completed its 450th TAVR procedure, and Hooda said the surgery is paving the way for even more breakthroughs in the future.

As opposed to open heart surgery, where a patient’s chest is cracked open to operate, a TAVR procedure is much, much less invasive. In that procedure, the aortic valve is replaced via a catheter inserted into the femoral artery at the groin and threaded to the patient’s heart.

This procedure significantly cuts down surgery time and recovery time for the TAVR patient, Hooda said. He said an open heart surgery, including prep time, takes about two hours and recovery could take five to seven days. A TAVR procedure takes about 45 minutes, and the patient is usually sent home the next day.

“Yesterday, we did two (TAVR procedures),” Hooda said. “We were done with both of them by around noon and, by around four o’clock in the evening up on the sixth floor, they were up and walking around with their family members.”

The TAVR program at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital began at the end of 2017, so the hospital is entering its eighth year of offering the procedure. Hooda said that the hospital began offering TAVR about five years earlier than normal for a hospital of its size. In that time, the procedure has evolved into a streamlined process.

It’s a minimalist approach, Hooda said. They no longer use general anesthesia, just sedation. Most of the cases don’t need breathing tubes.

What makes Hooda most proud isn’t just the quantity of the TAVR procedures done in Wheeling, but the quality of each one. For the last few years, the hospital has publicly reported the outcomes of the procedure – if anyone needed a pacemaker, if anyone suffered a stroke, had major or minor bleeding, had to be readmitted within 30 days or died within a year of the procedure.

“For the last two rolling quarters,” Hooda said, “those numbers have been zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. Nothing at all. I’m so proud of my team, there’s no question about that. We’re such a well-oiled machine. That’s the only way you can achieve those numbers.”

WVU Medicine Regional President Douglass Harrison also said he’s beaming with pride over the success of his cardiac team and this procedure.

“We look forward to the future of cutting-edge advancements in our structural heart repair program,” he said, “as we remain committed to offering area residents the very best in health care and treatment options.”

Hooda said there will be advancements on the way. TAVR procedures down the line will be able to be done through one artery rather than multiple. Also, other heart valves will one day be able to be replaced using minimally invasive procedures.

“Now I say to my students that nothing has changed cardiology more than TAVR in the last 10 years,” Hooda said.