Edward-Elmhurst hosts "Celebration of Life" for heart patients

Edward-Elmhurst Health’s heart team hosted “The Celebration of Life Event” at Edward Hospital in Naperville on October 12 to highlight how cardiac medical innovations have affected and saved the lives of many patients. Nearly 300 people attended the event throughout the day, which featured a luncheon and open house. Among the featured speakers were patients who talked about how they were out of options to treat their conditions, but were saved by high-end structural heart procedures that are not readily available throughout the region and country.

In the photo above, Robert Williams, 81, of Naperville, meets with Bryan Foy, MD, a cardiothoracic surgeon with Edward-Elmhurst Health and Cardiac Surgery Associates. In 2013, Dr. Foy and an Edward-Elmhurst team implanted a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) in Williams to treat his advanced heart failure. Edward-Elmhurst is the only community hospital in the Chicago area that doesn’t have a transplant program to provide mechanical circulatory support for patients.

Those procedures include MitraClip for mitral regurgitation, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) for aortic stenosis, the WATCHMAN device for atrial fibrillation and left ventricular assist device (LVAD) for advanced heart failure. Edward-Elmhurst also treats coronary artery chronic total occlusion (CTO) with minimally invasive options and open heart surgery, and is a national training site for CTO procedures.

Mark Goodwin, MD, is System Medical Director of the Edward-Elmhurst Health Cardiac Innovations & Structural Heart Center, which uses complex, minimally invasive heart procedures to treat patients who have often been told that traditional surgery is too risky.

For more information, visit www.eehealth.org/services/heart-vascular.