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2021 Heart & Vascular Annual Report

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Structural heart

St. Mary’s in Grand Junction has the largest structural heart program between Salt Lake City and Denver. The program is a leader in TAVR procedures and also provides other structural heart specialties1.

Structural heart

Structural & heart valve disorders

There are a variety of structural and heart valve disorders that heart and vascular program treats and manages2. Common disorders range from heart defects, such as holes in the walls of the heart, to valve diseases, where blood flow is disrupted due to leaky or stiff valves.

Many of these issues may present as a heart murmur, or whooshing sound in the heart, or can have more serious symptoms including fatigue or shortness of breath.

Structural heart

MitraClip for mitral valve disease

The MitraClip Transcatheter Mitral Valve Repair (TMVr) procedure is a minimally invasive catheter-based therapy for patients with primary or secondary mitral regurgitation. While open-heart surgery to repair or replace the mitral valve is generally recommended, it may not be an option for many patients who are at high surgical risk or have secondary heart failure.

St. Mary’s offers MitraClip, which has shown to be extremely safe, reduced or eliminated mitral regurgitation symptoms, and resulted in shorter hospital lengths of stay and reduced hospitalizations for patients with concurrent heart failure.

Convergent procedure for Afib

TAVR for aortic valve disease

St. Mary’s is one of the only hospitals in the region to offer Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR). TAVR is a minimally invasive alternative to open-heart valve surgery for patients with aortic valve stenosis. Once reserved only for patients at elevated risk for traditional valve surgery, today, TAVR eligibility is more inclusive of severe, symptomatic calcific aortic stenosis patients, independent of surgical risk.

Convergent procedure for Afib

Open surgery interventions for structural heart disease

While new, minimally invasive techniques have been developed to treat a variety of structural heart disease, especially for patients at medium to high risk for open-heart surgery, conventional methods still remains a common and proven way to cure or reserve structural heart issues.

The heart and vascular program at St. Mary’s offers surgical treatments for surgical heart disease, including:

Convergent procedure for Afib

2021 Heart & Vascular Annual Report for SCL Health, now Intermountain Healthcare.

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