Trinity Health System launches new program for those battling heart disease

Steubenville, OH (WTRF)- Trinity Health System successfully launches a new way to care for those battling advanced heart disease.

They call it Transcatheter Aortic Value Replacement, or TAVR in short.

How it works is simple.

The patient doesn’t have to undergo open-heart surgery like they normally would. There’s no cutting involved. They won’t even have to induce patients with general anesthesia but with minimum sedation.

This makes it for a less painful and a quicker recovery process for the patients.

With this procedure, patients could be up and walking in just 4 hours and can go home the next day. The procedure itself is also quicker… only takes about 45 minutes.

And the team behind it all believes the difference it will make is huge.

“It’s a game-changer. It’s radically different, and to all the patients out there, we have the intervention cardiologist with the most experience, and now here at Trinity, we’re open and welcoming of all patients who need our care.”

Dr. Triston Smith, medical director of the Structural Heart Program

Smith says the team that got this Structural Heart program up and running did it in record-breaking time. He says it only took them five months.

But Smith adds none of this would have been possible without their Trinity Health Structural Heart Team.