First TAVR Patient Experiences Immediate Relief

Jane's Story

Jane Raymond is back.

That’s what her son told her a couple of weeks after she became the first patient to undergo a cardiac valve replacement at Concord Hospital Center for Cardiac Care, without open heart surgery.

How did he know? Jane had raked the leaves in their yard in Boscawen. It’s a simple task for most people, but something Jane could not do last fall because a failing heart valve left her with little energy.

Jane Ramond

“I love to work in my yard. I love to garden. I love to shovel, but I couldn’t do any of that,” said Jane, who is 59. “I couldn’t go out and rake. I could barely bring my trash outside. I was very short of breath.”

Even getting out of bed in the middle of the night was taxing.

“I’d go back to bed and my heart was pounding,” Jane said. “I wondered ‘Am I going to make it through the night?”

Enter Concord Hospital Center for Cardiac Care, which began performing the Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) procedure this spring. The procedure offers hope to patients for whom traditional valve replacement surgery is not an option.

A team of cardiac specialists from Concord Hospital Cardiac Associates used a catheter to insert Jane’s new heart valve into an artery in her thigh and maneuvered it through the artery to her heart.

Because of another medical condition, her doctors saw the TAVR procedure as Jane’s only option.

“I was very scared,” Jane said, through tears. “But once I talked to Dr. Shahab Moossavi, I realized I was going to be okay. He said ‘You are going to be fine,’ and I am.”

Jane was home two days after the procedure, doing yard work two weeks later, and two weeks after that, she was back at her job as a health care facility worker.

“I got the best treatment ever,” she said. “The doctors and nurses were unbelievable. They saved my life.”

And they saved her quality of life, allowing her to do the things she likes to do - like raking last fall’s leftover leaves.