TAVR
Minimally invasive procedure replaces failing heart valve in older patients too frail for surgery
World War II was ending, and Rudolph Loebel’s father had been killed at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, in German-occupied Poland. Fearing for his safety, Loebel's mother sent her teenage son to [...]
“She was the one who fell in love with me and I have never regretted being married,” says Rudolph Loebel, who found out he needed a trans-catheter aortic valve replacement and that his wife, Rachel Loebel, needed one as well. “They operated on me and my wife on exactly [...]
"I was afraid with general anesthesia that I wouldn't wake up again," says Francis Shloss, who came to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center for her heart surgery. Dr. William Suh, who performed her TAVR, [...]
Aortic stenosis (when the heart’s aortic valve doesn’t fully open) has a pretty high mortality rate — at one year there is a 50 percent chance of dying, so these patients were left hopeless,” says William Suh, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Ronald Reagan UCLA [...]
To the UCLA medical team who cared for my father in his final weeks of life:
My father, Frank Eck, recently passed away on the 8th floor of your medical center, in the ICU. After a bravely combating a myriad of health issues for two-and-a-half weeks with profound determination [...]