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Mending a hole in a woman's heart
(by Maggie Fazeli Fard - April 29, 2008)
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Photo Courtesy Of
Englewood
Hospital And
Medical
Center
Dr. Thomas Cocke, a physician at Westwood Cardiology Associates, stands over Eleanor Enerson of Closter moments after completing a non-surgical procedure to close a hole in her heart.
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Between the holidays and the new year, the snow and sleet, and afternoons spent with her grandchildren, this past winter was marked by one overriding theme for Eleanor Enerson: shortness of breath.
“I was almost unable to breathe when I walked across the room or up and down the stairs,” says the Closter resident. “Then I had pain in my chest and I called my regular doctor. He said, ‘Go to the emergency room.’”
It turned out that the pain in Enerson’s chest had nothing to do with her breathing trouble – that was caused by a hernia causing her stomach to bulge up into her chest – but as long as she was in the hospital, the doctors conducted a cardiac checkup.
“I had a hole in my heart,” explains Enerson.
Poetic as it sounds, having a hole in one’s heart is one of the most common congenital heart defects. Sufferers are born with a hole in the wall separating the uppermost chambers of the heart, the atria. The condition can be caught and repaired in childhood, but oftentimes the hole is silent, with symptoms and complications arising later in life.
In the weeks that followed her emergency room visit, Enerson, who has had a heart murmur since childhood and is now in her 70s, met with her primary care physician and, eventually, Dr. Thomas Cocke, a Westwood-based cardiologist who would be charged with mending the hole in her heart.
In years past, the common corrective measure was open-heart surgery, which, as the name somewhat brutally suggests, requires the chest cavity to be opened.
But Cocke had a different prescription for Enerson, proposing to perform a non-surgical procedure using small discs of fabric to close the hole.
“It is fairly new,” says Cocke, a physician at Westwood Cardiology Associates, of the technology, which first came on the market about five years ago. A catheter is inserted into the femoral artery in the groin area. The tube goes up into the right atrium of the heart and across the hole into the left atrium.
Cocke, who has performed approximately 100 of these procedures in his career, likens the closure device, the GORE HELEX Septal Occluder, to a flexible alloy corkscrew that carries a ribbon of synthetic material. When placed in the hole, the corkscrew opens up, spreading the fabric open on either side of the hole.
“When the spirals collapse,” says Cocke, “a circular disc of fabric is left on each side of the hole.”
On Friday, April 18, Enerson underwent the procedure, which utilizes a local anaesthetic, at
Englewood
Hospital and
Medical
Center .
“I was aware [during the procedure],” Enerson recalls, who felt no pain. “I could feel them touching me. I heard them talking. I couldn’t care less what they were saying! It was wonderful!”
The procedure took approximately 45 minutes, and Enerson was up and about almost immediately. “I got up and went to the bathroom,” she says with a laugh. Like all patients, she was kept in the hospital overnight for monitoring.
Cocke says that Enerson’s experience is not uncommon, noting that there is rarely any pain around the heart and only mild soreness in the groin where the artery is tapped. He adds that open-heart surgery is still a viable option for more complicated repairs to the heart, but it is no longer the only option.
“The recovery is a lot better and it is just as effective [as open-heart surgery] for many patients,” says Cocke.
It will take about two months for the hole in Enerson’s heart to be completed closed, as the heart’s own tissue grows around the fabric discs.
But in the meantime, things are better than normal for Enerson, who is eager to get back to activities put on the backburner in recent months.
“I am able to do things I haven’t been able to do in a while,” says Enerson. “I cleaned out the kitchen. I scrubbed down the stairs. Things I haven’t been able to do in months and months.
“This little patch,” she continues, “about an inch in diameter: as far as I’m concerned, it’s a miracle.”
Maggie Fazeli Fard's e-mail address is fazelifard@northjersey.com.
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