HEART
NEW HEART VALVE WITHOUT OPEN HEART SURGERY It’s been a year since Roger Kromminga, 70, found out he had stage 4 prostate cancer. Last spring, he saw his doctor for what he thought were symptoms of COVID-19, and test results led to the discovery of cancer. He’s now in remission, but at his final chemotherapy visit, he mentioned having trouble catching his breath, and his legs were swollen. The nurse also noticed he had an irregular heartbeat. “Toward the end of my cancer treatments, I suddenly started retaining fluid, and I could hardly walk the 80 yards to my mailbox without stopping to rest,” Kromminga said. From oncology, Kromminga was promptly taken to St. Luke’s Heart Care Clinic to meet with Cardiologist Boothapuri Venkatesh, MD, who discovered a problem with one of Kromminga’s heart valves and
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immediately involved the interventional cardiology team. “Roger was admitted to the hospital with congestive heart failure, due to a severely leaky mitral valve,” explained Aref Bin Abdulhak, MD, St. Luke’s interventional and structural cardiologist. “The mitral valve connects the left upper chamber of the heart to the left lower chamber, and the leak was responsible for his heart failure symptoms. “Additional tests showed the valve had degenerative changes that caused it to leak,” Dr. Bin Abdulhak continued. “The first option in this situation would normally be open heart surgery but given the comorbidity of his prostate cancer, he was deemed high-risk, so we recommended the MitraClip.”
Roger Kromminga, 70, recently received a MitraClip to repair his heart’s leaking mitral valve. The catheter-based MitraClip procedure is only available in Cedar Rapids at St. Luke’s. It greatly improved Kromminga’s quality of life and saved him from open-heart surgery, which reduced his recovery time.
I’m glad they caught my heart problem and I had the procedure done, I’m a pretty active person. I really enjoy being outside, working on my tractors and gardening. The MitraClip has made a world of difference in helping me get back to the things I enjoy.
