What you should know about TAVR
If the Heart Team determines you are at high risk, too sick to undergo open-heart surgery
or if medication is not helping you improve, TAVR may be an alternative. This less invasive
procedure allows a new valve to be inserted within your diseased aortic valve while your
heart is still beating. And just like surgical open-heart aortic valve replacement (AVR), TAVR
has been shown to consistently enhance quality of life. Because the TAVR procedure is not
right for everyone, your Heart Team will inform you if you are candidate.
TAVR at Renown
Renown has created a new Heart Valve Program with a variety of specialists focused on
diagnoses and treatment of heart valve disease. Our Heart Team is experienced in both
open-heart surgery and TAVR procedures, and can help you determine the most appropriate
procedure for you. Ensuring the safety of our patients is always our top priority. To guarantee
the success of the TAVR program, we completed a rigorous training program and created a
multidisciplinary heart care team before completing the first procedure.
This elite group of doctors and specialists includes board-certified cardiothoracic surgeons,
interventional cardiologists, echocardiographers, a cardiovascular anesthesiologist, as well as
specially trained nurses and technicians.
Hospitals that want to perform the TAVR procedure must meet strict requirements. Federal
regulations require TAVR teams to have a cardiac surgeon with more than 100 career openheart surgeries and an interventional cardiologist experienced with 30 left-sided structural
procedures per year. They also require the hospital offering TAVR to perform 1,000 heart
catheterizations and 50 open-heart aortic valve replacement surgeries per year. Hospitals
must also have an on-site cardiac catheterization lab or hybrid operating room, noninvasive
imaging and post-procedure intensive care facility.
Jake H. Ichino, MD, FACC, FSCAI, the interventional cardiologist performing the TAVR
procedure at Renown, has been driving to Sacramento every week for the past year to ensure
he had the training and expertise needed to perform TAVR here in our region.