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August 24, 2004
Making a Heart
Decision in the Nick of Time
Oklahoma
City—Just two days before Helen Obert was to undergo open-heart surgery
in Fort Worth, Texas, she did the unthinkable. She called it off. With
one artery totally blocked and two other arteries almost completely
clogged, Obert didn’t have much time to waste.
The
85-year-old, who acts more like a 68-year-old, had some second thoughts
before she underwent major surgery.
“I was sitting
in my beauty shop and I began to talk about my mom’s heart surgery which
was planned that week,” said Cheryl Anderson, Obert’s daughter. “It just
so happened that a cardiac nurse who works in Fort Worth happened to be
listening. She asked me which doctor and which hospital my mother was
going to and when I told her, she said, ‘Don’t do it.’ I was so upset by
what I found out that I didn’t even stay to get my hair done.”
After some
shoptalk, an Internet search and a strong word-of-mouth recommendation
from a long-time family friend, Obert and her two daughters made a trip
to Oklahoma City on the day she would have been in surgery.
“Thanks to the
cardiac care nurse and our own research, I decided I wanted to have
off-pump bypass surgery if at all possible because some research
suggests that patients tend to have fewer complications if they aren’t
placed on a heart-lung machine during open-heart surgery,” said Obert.
“I found Dr. Mark Bodenhamer at Oklahoma Heart Hospital who does more
off-pump bypasses than anyone in the region. I was also looking at
infection and mortality rates because I wanted to make sure that I came
out of the operation alive and well. Oklahoma Heart Hospital has some of
the best infection and mortality rates in the nation.”
Dr. Bodenhamer,
an Oklahoma Cardiovascular Associates’ heart surgeon, performs off-pump
bypasses on about 75 percent of his patients, leading the state in
off-pump bypasses. For patients, that means better outcomes. According
to the American Heart Association’s Circulation journal, as well as The
New England Journal of Medicine, numerous studies show that the more
procedures physicians do, the higher the success rates.
The Journal of
the American Medical Association specifically states that “mortality
rates for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery are lower in
hospitals that perform a higher volume of the procedure.” Data over the
past decade has continued to echo the finding that hospitals performing
higher numbers of procedures have lower complication and mortality
rates.
“We are
performing more heart surgeries per surgeon than facilities such as
Cleveland Clinic and Mayo Clinic,” said Dr. Bodenhamer. According to
2002 Cleveland Clinic Foundation data, 14 surgeons at the Cleveland
campus performed 3,825 surgery procedures (an average of 273 per surgeon
in a year). With more than 1,100 performed this past year at the
Oklahoma Heart Hospital, the average per surgeon is 366. In addition,
Mayo Clinic has nine surgeons and performs about 2,500 heart surgeries
every year (an average of 277 per surgeon).
“Besides
wanting to make sure my mother had a very good doctor, we also were very
concerned about her care in the hospital after surgery,” said Anderson.
“My father died 20 years ago from an infection that he caught in a
hospital.”
For the family,
Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s infection and mortality rates eased fears.
Both Oklahoma Heart Hospital’s rates for cardiac surgery infection and
cardiac surgery acute care mortality are lower than the national
average.
For Obert, that
was all she needed to know. A week later on Saturday, August 14, Dr.
Bodenhamer performed off-pump bypass surgery and today, Obert is
recuperating quite well.
For off-pump
bypasses, surgeons use technological advances and new kinds of operating
equipment to stabilize portions of the heart during surgery, rather than
stopping the heart. Studies have shown that the benefits of off-pump
surgery include shorter hospital and recovery time, less bleeding, less
potential for infection and less trauma. Not all patients are candidates
for off-pump bypass surgery. Whether on-pump or off-pump, coronary
bypass operations have excellent results with a very low risk of death,
stroke or myocardial infarction.
“With Oklahoma
ranking second in the nation in deaths due to cardiovascular disease,
the need for the Oklahoma Heart Hospital is long overdue,” said Dr.
Bodenhamer. “Here, our primary focus is hearts. We want to care for
patients with heart problems and help educate them about living a
heart-healthy life.”
Oklahoma Heart
Hospital, the first all-digital hospital in the nation, is a partnership
between Oklahoma Cardiovascular Associates and Mercy Health Center,
along with other cardiovascular physicians.
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