Missoula now has one of the world’s most advanced cardiovascular labs

With every pump of her heart, a quarter of the blood being pushed through the aortic valve leaks backward into her left ventricle.

It’s called aortic regurgitation, and over time, it can lead to heart failure.
The 56-year-old female had open-heart surgery at St. Patrick Hospital last week to repair the valve. But before they operated, her surgeons wanted to know:

Were they going to find anything else once her chest was cut open?

So the day before her surgery, Dr. Tod Maddux inserted a catheter through a sheath and into her femoral artery in order to shoot dye into her heart. In the room next door, part of the six-person medical team taking part in the procedure watched as the dye-filled veins appeared on one of the eight computer screens hooked up to the machinery.

What they saw almost shocked them.

“Wow,” said a nurse monitoring the patient’s vital signs. “Look at that.”

What exactly did they see?

By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2006/06/04/news/local/news02.txt

The International Heart Institute of Montana http://ihimontanafoundation.org/