ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A Central Florida resident’s life was saved by a cutting-edge cardiac procedure at AdventHealth.
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“I’ve Heli skied, I’ve extreme skied, I’ve raced, I taught snow ski for 20 years, I’ve enjoyed it my whole life, it was never very hard,” Gregg Lee, a cardiac patient at AdventHealth, said.
Lee is an expert level snow and water skier. He immediately knew something was wrong with his health when he couldn’t catch his breath after one run down a beginner ski slope while on vacation in Idaho.
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He was 67 at the time.
“I went just a little way, and I was short of breath, and I went this is not right, I’ve never been short of breath on the mountain ever,” Lee said.
The scare sent him to see Dr. Kevin Accola, a cardiothoracic surgeon at AdventHealth. Dr. Accola performed a transcutaneous aortic valve replacement, or TAVR procedure. It’s a minimally invasive procedure compared to open heart surgery.
“Placing a valve in his native valve, or the valve they have sewn in, and creating a normal functioning aortic valve,” Dr. Accola said.
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Doctors go in through the groin with a catheter, up through an artery and place a new valve inside the valve that no longer works in the heart. Since this procedure is less stress on a patient’s body, Lee was out of the hospital the next day.
“The advantage of it is they don’t have to have an open chest, they’re not on a heart and lung machine,” Dr. Accola said.
“My recovery was amazing,” Lee said. “There was no pain. After a week or 10 days after the TAVR procedure I was back on the water.”
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Now more than two years after the procedure, Lee said the TAVR gave him his life back.
“I can still ski, I can still walk, snow ski, water ski, play golf, work in the yard, chase my grandkids around,” Lee said.
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