ATLANTA, GA (IvanhoeNewswire) – You literally feel breathless and fatigued, and it's hard to stand or even walk. This is a heart condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, in which the walls of the heart's main pumping chamber thicken and stiffen, preventing it from pumping enough blood. Two million people worldwide suffer from this condition, but now a groundbreaking treatment hopes to hotwire the heart back to life.
Nothing is stopping 83-year-old Elberta Jenkins.
“I walk a lot. I go shopping. I go to thrift stores. I keep moving. I have to keep moving,” Elberta said.
However, a malfunctioning heart valve nearly killed her.
She recalled: “They needed to put in a new microvalve and the doctors tried to put it in but they said the artery wasn't open, the artery was blocked. They couldn't put it in and there was nothing else the doctors could do.”
Surgery was too risky, so they tried to replace the valve using a catheter through the groin, but that was impossible because the heart muscle had thickened.
“So we had to come up with new solutions,” says Adam Greenbaum, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Emory University.
That's when a team from Emory University came up with the Sesame Method.
“We don't have to open the chest, we don't have to put the patient on a heart-lung machine to stop the heart,” Dr. Greenbaum explains. “We can perform the surgery with the heart beating all the time.”
Dr. Greenbaum used a catheter with a wire at the end that uses radiofrequency energy to cut open the heart muscle.
“Where the muscle is too thick, we put a wire in, run electricity through the wire and slice it lengthwise. And because the muscle is alive, it expands, creating the space it needs,” Dr. Greenbaum further explains.
Elberta got a new valve and hasn't missed a step since!
“I feel great and being able to go for walks every day feels really good,” she says happily.
Emory doctors say patients from across the country have traveled to Emory for the procedure since it was first performed three years ago, and in the latest study, 82 patients underwent the procedure, 80 of which were successful.
Contributors to this news report include producer Marcia Lewis, videographer Matt Goldschmidt and editor Roque Correa.
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