UT Southwestern Clinical Heart & Vascular Center

UT Southwestern’s valve program provides evidence-based care customized to the needs of each individual patient. This means that while most of our patients will benefit from a minimally invasive surgical approach, each case is routinely discussed by our valve team to determine what the best course of treatment may be for each individual.

In some instances, patients will benefit from an interventional procedure, like TAVR. Other patients may need additional procedures done at the time of their surgery, like a MAZE procedure for atrial fibrillation. There are even some patients for which a surgical or interventional procedure may not be the best option. This is why each case is unique, and why they are evaluated individually by our team.

For those patients that require surgery, our minimally invasive approach, also known as a mini-thoracotomy, is performed through a 2-inch incision between the ribs without cutting through any bones. And because no bones are broken during surgery, recovery times are considerably faster, and patients usually return to work within a week.

This approach is also frequently used to perform multi-valve replacements in the same surgery, minimizing the time required for cardiopulmonary bypass and reducing total time for the surgery.