As people increasingly prefer western diet and the population is aging, now cardiovascular disease such as arteriosclerosis and sudden death became the second biggest cause of death following cancer. Against the backdrop, the medical staff are doing their utmost for prevention, early diagnosis and cutting-edge treatment of such diseases. The team also increases patient satisfaction by offering skillful and specialized procedures like high precision stent insertion.

24-Hour On-Call for Treatment within the Golden Time

Especially, faculty member physicians are on call for 24 hours to take immediate response for patients with myocardial infarction and make sure that coronary artery functions normally again and recovers the heart. If a patient suffers from a severe heart shock and becomes unconscious, the medical team carries out the latest technique of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (artificial heart-lung machine) or therapeutic hypothermia that lowers body temperature to reduce the production of harmful substances inside the body, thereby preventing damages in important organs and brain. In addition, if cardiovascular intervention is not available due to a patient’s vessel condition, the staff immediately consult together with Chest Surgery to perform coronary artery bypass grafting without delay in order to make bypass vessels in the heart.

Implant of New Valve without Open-Chest Surgery

“Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI),” the Stent Implant to Cure Aortic Stenosis

CHA Bundang Medical Center performs “Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation (TAVI)” that implants a new heart valve without the need to open up the chest. It is a procedure to insert a catheter with a balloon at its tip through femoral artery up to the heart valve and make it inflated, and then place a mesh that works as a heart valve in a proper position in the aortic valve. As the operation takes about one or two hours, it can reduce the amount of energy the patient needs for treatment and the possibility of complications in comparison with other time-consuming operations. Patients are hospitalized for a relatively short time of three to five days after the operation. As it is not open-chest surgery, it rarely causes pains or adverse effects such as motor abnormality and patients can return to their daily lives right after the procedure. Therefore, it has become a riskless solution even for the elderly or high-risk patients with aortic stenosis.