Heart valve disease is the focus of new Seton Clinic

AUSTIN -- It's a one-stop shop for patients with heart valve disease, and it's right here in Austin. The new heart valve clinic at the Seton Heart Institute allows patients the latest minimally-invasive procedures with various specialists all under one roof. The intent is to make it easier to get care without much travel and get them back on their feet as quickly as possible.

The year is 1954. Bettye and Grady Porter and their young children are all smiles posing for a photo. Now flash forward. The Porters are in their 80s and still smiling, but Grady suffers from Alzheimer's.

"It was important to me that I be able to take care of him," said Bettye.

But she couldn't.

"I was too weak," she said. "I would get too tired to take care of him."

It turns out Bettye's weakness is due to a condition called severe aortic stenosis – a narrowing of a heart valve.

"Once you develop symptomatic aortic stenosis, about 50 percent of those people will die in the next two years," said Mark Pirwitz, M.D., the Seton Heart Institute CEO, President and Co-Director of Research.

Bettye couldn't get traditional "open heart" surgery due to the lengthy recovery period that would keep her from caring for Grady. Instead she opted for a new procedure called Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement or TAVR. It puts a new valve in the heart via a catheter inserted through an incision in the groin. Surgeons carefully guide it up to the heart through the circulatory system.

"This allowed her to get back up on her feet in just a couple of days and back home and not having an extended rehab session," said Pirwitz.

Bettye says not being confined to a hospital bed for a lengthy period of time is wonderful because she gets to be where she wants to be -- at home with her husband.

"I was able to get up and get about my business in such a short time, and feeling well in such a short time has really been a blessing for me," said Bettye.

The Seton Heart Valve Clinic is the first site in Central Texas to participate in a study of a new valve clip called MitraClip.

Click here to learn more about that study and the new clinic.