Lifesaving surgery makes Valentine's Day especially sweet for him

 

Just two months ago, he was slowly suffocating from pulmonary fibrosis, a condition with no cure that causes scar tissue build-up in the lungs, making it difficult to breathe. In addition, his main heart valve was so clogged with calcium deposits that it couldn’t open wide enough to adequately pump blood through his body.  

 

Feeling exhausted, the Thousand Oaks, Calif., resident had curtailed all his activities and needed to carry around an oxygen tank to help him breathe. 

 

Given his declining heart condition, it was too risky for him to receive a much needed lung transplant, a factor that the UCLA lung transplant committee took into consideration before turning him down. Given that UCLA handles the most advanced, serious patient cases and he still didn’t qualify, it looked like Boyle had truly run out of options.

 

But fortunately, there was one left. The heart team at UCLA was offering a new procedure that is designed for patients who are too sick to have the conventional surgery needed to replace the main heart valve. Luckily, Boyle qualified.

 

The minimally invasive procedure, called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR), involves far fewer surgical risks. TAVR allows doctors for the first time to replace the aortic valve without open heart surgery. It’s an attractive alternative for patients like Boyle, who aren't candidates for traditional surgery.  

 

The usual TAVR approach is to deliver the valve to the heart via an artery in the groin using a catheter, which is a hollow delivery tube. But in Boyle's case, these arteries had blockages that made this approach impossible. Alternatively, a small incision is made on the side of the chest, and the valve is delivered through the lowest part of the heart called the apex. Once in place, the valve is opened, and it starts working immediately.

 

Boyle had the TAVR procedure using this alternative approach last June with a heart team led by Dr. Richard Shemin, chief of cardiothoracic surgery, and Dr. William Suh, assistant clinical professor of medicine and interventional cardiology, both with UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine and UCLA Health System.   

 

Boyle’s heart was doing so well after the valve replacement that he was encouraged to try to get listed again for a lung transplant. This time he was approved by the UCLA committee and received his lifesaving lung transplant in late November with a team led by Dr. Abbas Ardehali, a professor of cardiothoracic surgery and director of the heart and lung transplantation program at UCLA.

 

Today, Boyle is progressing nicely, say his doctors — and he couldn’t be happier.

 

“I don’t feel as physically limited as before and have a new lease on life,” said Boyle, who doesn’t need to carry oxygen anymore and has started to exercise as well.

 

There have been additional benefits. He also had high blood pressure in the lungs, a condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension that needed to be treated, while awaiting transplant, with continuous infusion of a medication via a portable pump. He doesn’t require that any longer either.

 

“Procedures like TAVR offer new options for patients who are either inoperable or high-risk candidates for conventional open aortic-valve replacement surgery,” said Suh. 

 

“Such minimally invasive procedures like TAVR, which can be lifesaving in themselves, can also help us better stabilize patients so they are able to receive a lifesaving organ, in this case, a lung transplant,” said Dr. David Ross, a professor of medicine and medical director of UCLA’s lung and heart-lung transplantation program and UCLA’s pulmonary arterial hypertension program.

 

Retired from a career in computers, Boyle now plans to keep up better with his four grandchildren and is looking forward to spending a special Valentine’s Day with his wife.  

 

“We have a lot to celebrate this year,” he said. “I’m very grateful to the donor whose lung has given me a wonderful new start in life.”

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For more information about the TAVR program and see an animation video of the surgery, contact 310-825-9011 or visit the following website: uclahealth.org/TAVR

 

For more information about the UCLA Lung Transplant program, contact 310-825-6068 or visit the following website: transplants.ucla.edu/lung