Erik's Profile

First off thanks to Adam for creating this site, it's a fabulous resource for patients and their families. My story: currently 57, was diagnosed with bicuspid aortic valve at 30, always been asymptomatic but then out of the blue just before Xmas 2017 I started having heart flutter sensations, heavy breathing and major loss of energy and was diagnosed with Afib, had an ablation procedure shortly after which successfully corrected that. Then later in 2018 as part of a full cardiac check up the aortic aneurysm and mildly leaky mitral and pulmonary valves were also discovered. I have been regularly monitored since, 1st yearly then every 6 months as the aneurysm and aortic valve regurgitation steadily got worse. Back in March I switched to a new cardiologists as I felt the previous Dr (who took over from my original Dr who retired in 2020) was not really providing attentive care plus he cancelled my 6-mo. check-up appointment which could not be rescheduled until July. The new cardiologist (in his 70s so very experienced and also conservative about cardiac issues as he told me) reviewed all my records and did not like what he saw, he immediately referred me to a cardiac surgeon at Washington Medstar Hospital Center, who confirmed it's time to replace the aorta and aortic valve. After spending a week or so researching the procedure, watching youtube videos and reading stories of how challenging and long recovery from traditional open heart surgery can be, I saw mention of minimally invasive procedures but found that doing both the aorta and valve replacement at the same time with a minimally invasive procedure is not commonly done. In fact almost no cardiac surgeons in the US do that, but then I found Dr. Doolabh at UTSouthwestern in Dallas who does and discussed the MI procedure with my cardiac surgeon in DC, he was very honest and upfront saying he could not do the MI procedure and would not experiment on me, but felt very confident he can fix me with traditional open heart surgery. As we talked more and I expressed I really preferred if possible not to be down 6-8 weeks for recovery due to work and family obligations, plus I do a lot of camping, kayaking and motorcycle riding in the summer, he offered to look into it more for me and see what he can find out. Turns out both his colleagues at Stanford and Cleveland Clinic identified Dr. Doolabh and Dr. Lamelas at U. of Miami. So I am currently waiting on telemed consultations with both to help determine if I'm a candidate for the MI procedure or need to go the traditional open heart route. I'll update this once I make a decision, but hoping for an early June surgery date either way. UPDATE: consultations went well with both surgeons, both were very forthcoming and I got all my questions answered. I felt confident about both but decided to go with Dr. Lamelas, even Dr. Doolabh said he's the best for MI. So June 17th is the big day.