An a-Mazing Heart Procedure

It crept up gradually, still Mark Richards had a sneaky suspicion something was wrong with his heart.

“It was just way out of whack - beat-wise,” Richards described.

A classic symptom of A-fib; a common heart rhythm problem.

“The big problem is that the electrical conduction of the heart is irregular. And you don’t have the normal contraction of the back chamber of the heart, the atria. It fibrillates,” explains Dr. Paul DiGiorgi, a cardiothoracic surgeon with Lee Memorial Health System.

Years ago it was thought the quivering heart was harmless, now it’s recognized as a major health threat.

“About 5 million people have atrial fibrillation in the US and about a third of those people are going to have a stroke,” says Dr. DiGiorgi.

When the heart gets out of synch, blood doesn’t fully evacuate. It can lead to the formation of blood clots. The surgical fix is ablation- re-directing electrical impulses by creating scar tissue.

“It forces the electrical conduction through the heart to go through the right channel, sort of like cutting off all the side streets and forcing the electrical conduction in going the right way.”

The gold standard was the Maze procedure, named because surgeons essentially create a maze-like pathway for electrical impulses to follow. It was always performed in open-heart surgery. Now Lee Memorial Health System is offering a new method- the hybrid Maze- which doesn’t require opening the chest.

“We go in between the ribs, minimally invasively on both sides, we do an ablation procedure and then we also put a clip on the side of the heart which gets rid of the left atrial appendage, the part of the heart that harbors the clot,” says Dr. DiGiorgi.

With the new Maze approach, patients will have a fully functioning heart that beats in the proper rhythm without the worry of blood clots ever forming.

“I was more than willing to let them try,” says Richards. He volunteered to be the first patient, undergoing the procedure in December.

“Now when I sleep, it doesn’t sound like a jazz ensemble anymore. It sounds like a regular heart beat.”

More than 90% of people get off blood thinners and greatly lower their risk of a catastrophic event.

“Patients who had Maze procedures, their chances of having a stroke are less than 1% in their lifetime,” says Dr. DiGiorgi.

Making this a truly a-Mazing procedure.
View More Health Matters video segments at leememorial.org/healthmatters/

Lee Memorial Health System in Fort Myers, FL is the largest network of medical care facilities in Southwest Florida and is highly respected for its expertise, innovation and quality of care. For nearly a century, we’ve been providing our community with everything from primary care treatment to highly specialized care services and robotic assisted surgeries.

Visit leememorial.org

Видео An a-Mazing Heart Procedure канала Lee Health