Email this pageCARDIAC - One Patient’s Story
A New Option
Tracy Rozelle, an
82-year old retired aeronautical engineer from
Ithaca, NY, started to feel some minor chest pain
while raking and shoveling late last year. This
spring, he visited his family doctor, who referred
him to Guthrie Clinic in Sayre for more testing and
a consultation with Guthrie Clinic Chief of
Cardiothoracic Surgery, Felice Reitknecht, MD. Said
Rozelle, "My family doctor suggested I have the
additional testing in Sayre so that if something
needed to be done, Dr. Reitknecht could do it – he
said she was the one for the job!" After
examining the test results, Dr. Reitknecht told
Rozelle that all four of his coronary arteries were
blocked and surgery was required. The type of
surgery she recommended is a relatively new
operation called a beating-heart coronary artery
bypass graft (beating-heart CABG), a procedure that
allows the surgeon to repair the heart’s vessels
without putting the patient on a heart-lung bypass
machine, which stops the heart and circulates the
patient’s blood to the rest of the body by
bypassing the heart.
Conventional CABG surgery performed with the aid of a heart-lung bypass machine has been available since the early 1960s. Beating-heart CABG, approved by the FDA in January of 1997, is appropriate for patients with a variety of heart conditions, including coronary artery disease, genetic heart problems, heart disease as a result of diet, lack of exercise or high cholesterol. Beating-heart CABG especially benefits high-risk patients such as women, the elderly and those with additional risk factors such as diabetes. Guthrie cardiothoracic surgeons have offered this new procedure since November 1999, when Dr. Reitknecht felt that the advances in the procedure had improved enough to be safely applicable.
The Surgery
Rozelle’s quadruple bypass surgery was scheduled for the first week in May. Admitted on a Monday, he underwent the hour and a half surgery, spent a day in the intensive care unit and was discharged on Wednesday. The new equipment used in the procedure allows the surgeon greater access to various parts of the heart, including the reverse side. This enables the surgeon to perform more grafting and repair techniques to more parts of the heart. Explains Dr. Reitknecht, "I now perform almost 100% of my CABG procedures as beating-heart surgeries, and am also doing beating-heart CABG in conjunction with transmyocardial revascularization (TMR), a laser heart surgical procedure that creates new passages for blood to circulate in the heart, circumventing diseased vessels."
The Benefits
Beating-heart CABG provides significant benefits for patients, including decreased length of hospital stay (two or three days instead of four) and shorter recovery time. Patients who have beating-heart CABG as opposed to on-pump bypass surgery have less blood loss and fewer instances of respiratory distress, kidney failure or post-operative heart attack or stroke. Women also seem to do better with beating-heart CABG because they often come to surgery later and have smaller vessels. Dr. Reitknecht is pleased with patient outcomes to date – no patients have come back for repeat heart catheterization or a second surgery, which are good signs.
Rozelle’s daughter Pamela Drix, who accompanied her father to his two-week follow-up appointment, said, "We were impressed with the speed of the surgery and how quickly Dad has bounced back." Rozelle is pleased with the outcome as well, and is eager to get back to his hobbies – volunteering in the community and hunting for mastodon fossils in Montana and the Ithaca area. A member of the Ithaca-area Paleontological Research Institution, Rozelle was able to participate in a whale skeleton excavation sponsored by the group just two weeks after his surgery. Recently named a Senior Volunteer of the Year by the Tompkins County Chamber of Commerce, Rozelle has nothing but praise for the beating-heart CABG procedure. "All this new technology really does impact patient care – the new surgical retractor and the beating-heart surgery made my hospital stay shorter. And as an engineer, I was also interested to see what assessments were needed from all the different specialists in order to manage my medical care. I’d never had major surgery before, and I was very impressed with the hospital."
For more information about making an appointment with a cardiac specialist at Guthrie, call toll-free 1-888-4GUTHRIE (1-888-448-8474).
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