Finding a Surgeon

As I said in my last post we were at a loss as far as selecting a surgeon for this procedure. Nothing in our experience told us how to proceed. It turns out that several of the dear friends we had informed, who also work at Medtronic, had contacts and they weren't afraid to use them. Within 24 hours we had executives in the Cardiac Surgery division working on our behalf to help us find candidate surgeons. We also had a very important guardian angel working on our behalf.

In addition, someone at Medtronic apparently forwarded my information to Dr. Stephen Oesterle, Medtronic's Senior Vice President of Medicine and Technology, who I believe was on vacation in the Atlantic at the time. Prior to joining Medtronic, Dr. Oesterle has served as Associate Professor of Medicine at the Harvard University Medical School and as Director of Invasive Cardiology Services at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston. A teacher and innovator in the field of cardiac catheterization, he has also developed and directed interventional cardiology programs at Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles; at Georgetown University; and at Stanford University. This was definitely someone I needed to listen to and take advice from. Dr. Oesterle e-mailed me as soon as he heard and immediately scoped out my condition and what I knew about it and started working my behalf to find the best person he could for my surgery. He quickly put me in contact with Dr. Craig Miller at Stanford University in California.

I talked to Dr. Miller on the phone and he explained his approach to my case and we discussed tissue vs. mechanical valves. We talked about the potential re-operation that tissue valves would require for someone my age (8-15 years life expectancy for current tissue valves). Dr. Miller assured me I wouldn't want to go through what I was about to go through twice! I was concerned about the mechanical valve and the fact that coumadin would be required for life to thin my blood and prevent the build-up of platelets and clots on the artificial mechanical valve. There are other technologies on the horizon that Dr. Miller and I discussed, but he wasn't ready to bet my life on them just yet though they have great promise. In the end, he agreed he would do what I wanted, but strongly encouraged me to consider mechanical as the best first choice. In the end I had a good feeling about this particular surgeon and Dr. Oesterle pointed out that this wasn't the kind of operation that just anyone could do with great skill and experience. We decided to work with Dr. Miller's staff to see how soon we could get on his schedule and have this operation done.

The results in the next post.

Jon