A trial is underway at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines on a heart valve replacement procedure that does not require opening up the patient’s chest. Cardiologist, Atul Chawla, says they are doing the procedure on patients with severe aortic stenosis, or failure of the aortic valve.

Chawla says a metallic cage that has pig tissue made into a valve on it is mounted on a catheter and the catheter is sent through a leg artery into the heart. Dr. Chawla says the new cage valve is then installed right into the diseased valve.

He says they go in with a balloon and dilate the old valve and then place the cage, which is self-expanding, and it opens up and pushes the old valve out of the way. Chawla says they are looking for up to 18-hundred patients who are interested in taking part in the trial.

Chawla says the trial is comparing this procedure with the standard procedure to see if it is the equivalent without having to open up the chest. The second part of the trial is examining whether this non-surgical procedure is better for patients who cannot have the one-heart operations. Chawla says the first couple of procedures have had great results.

He says the patients were discharged much earlier and much healthier than those who undergo the surgical procedure because there is not recovery from the surgery. Chawla says his first patient was sitting up and talking and having dinner three hours after the procedure. Chawla says they kept the first patient’s in the hospital for three days as a precaution, but someone could normally go home 48 hours after this procedure. The trial will continue into early spring or summer of next year, and then the F-D-A will evaluate the procedure and determine if it can be used.

Chawla says it usually takes the F-D-A six months to one year to analyze the data from a trial, as they like to have at least one year of follow up data. An F-D-A panel would then approve the procedure. The approval is usually given first for patients who can’t undergo the open-heart operation, and then later approved for all patients. Chawla says another non-surgical procedure that uses a totally different type of valve recently won F-D-A approval and should be available at the end of this year. The valve Chawla uses is called the Medtronic CoreValve, and you can find out more about participating in the trial at: www.aorticstenosistrial.com or by calling 515-802-4057.

(Radio Iowa)

While many hospitals use helicopters to bring patients in quickly, a hospital in the Council Bluffs area is switching to an airplane for certain circumstances. Dr. Rob Chaplin is medical director of the children’s transport service at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center in Omaha. He says the twin-engine King Air 100 airplane extends their ability to reach ill children and transport them to the hospital.

“With the helicopter, the range is about 150 miles, on average, and with the new aircraft, our range will be about a thousand miles,” Dr. Chaplin says. The transport service will now cover all of Nebraska, central and western Iowa and parts of South Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri and Kansas.

“We are expecting to be busy,” Chaplin says. “This is a service that no one else provides in this part of the country, especially for pediatrics. The closest being probably Children’s Mercy in Kansas City and then Denver Children’s out in Denver.” He says more physicians are seeing the advantage of having a dedicated pediatric team that can now take to the air to transport very ill children to the specialists in Omaha.

“It is equipped with the same equipment that we would carry on the ground or in the helicopter,” Chaplin says. “We have all of the medical equipment that we bring along. We have the ability to perform any of the procedures that we could essentially anywhere else in the state we can now do in the aircraft as well.” The Critical Care Transport’s first flight was to Kearney, Nebraska, last week.

(Radio Iowa)

The Cass County Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees will hold a special public meeting this morning at 8 o’clock in Atlantic, to decide the future of the Behavioral Health Unit at CCMH. The meeting was to have been held last week, but CCMH Administrator Pat Markham said one of the board members was not available for that meeting.

The board has held previous discussions on the possible closure of the BHU, because they say, the facility has been losing revenue. In 2010, the unit cost the hospital $500,000.

The Cass County Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Darby McLaren have sent letters to the board, offering their support for the Behavioral Health Unit, in hopes it will stay in Atlantic. At stake, are 21 jobs, and added costs to the County if BHU patients who are wards of the county, have to be transferred to other facilities across the state.

Today’s meeting will take place in CCMH Conference Room number One, first floor meeting room.

Police in the Taylor County community of Lenox say a central Iowa man was arrested Monday on a warrant associated fraud, and connected to repair work he was contracted to perform following the May 11th tornado that devastated a portion of the town. Officials say 27-year old Joseph Adam Whitehead, of Marshalltown, was arrested on a felony 1st Degree Theft charge, following an ongoing criminal investigation conducted by the Lenox P-D and the fraud division of the Iowa Attorney General’s Office.

Whitehead is accused of soliciting work from victims of the May 11th tornado in Lenox, being paid for the work and failing to perform the work. According to Lenox Police Chief Jon Huggins, the charge stems from a single incident in which Whitehead is alleged to have taken $11,000 from a single victim. Chief Huggins said also, that there are at least two known additional people who paid Whitehead for work that was never completed, and additional charges are expected to be filed in those cases as well.

Whitehead is currently being held in the Marion County Jail in Knoxville where he is facing felony theft charges filed by the Pella Police Department. The charges filed in Pella are unrelated to the Lenox charges.

According to Huggins, Whitehead is expected to be held in Marion County until the charges there are resolved and then be brought to Taylor County.

The City of Atlantic is issuing a reminder to property owners in the community, that City Ordinance states “All trees on private property and the abutting right of way (normally the area between the sidewalk and street), are the responsibility of the property owner.” The ordinance requires tree limbs to be maintained at a height clearance of seven-feet above the sidewalks, and 14-feet above the street.

The City is currently reviewing hazards to both vehicles and pedestrians from tree limbs, and it encourages property owners to review your trees and make certain they are in compliance. If the City is forced to trim trees on your property or the adjacent right of way, the property owner will be billed for the expense.

City officials say it is less expensive for property owners to have the work handled on their own, or contracted out, then it is for the City to take care of your trees for you.

A two-vehicle collision Friday afternoon at 4^th and Chestnut Streets in Atlantic caused $4,100 damage, but no injuries were reported. According to Atlantic Police, vehicles driven by Heidi Johnson, of Adair, and Mabel Stahl, of Atlantic, collided at around 4-p.m., when Johnson backed out of a parking space from the west side of Chestnut and hit Stahl’s vehicle on the right side, as she was traveling south on Chestnut.

Johnson was given a written warning for “Unsafe backing.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – Federal officials have expanded a disaster declaration for six Iowa counties hammered by Missouri River flooding. Gov. Terry Branstad announced the new declaration Monday by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying it would enable local officials to begin permanent repairs to damaged infrastructure, such as roads and bridges. Earlier declarations were focused on initial cleanup. The declaration covers Fremont, Harrison, Mills, Monona, Pottawattamie and Woodbury counties.

FEMA officials approved the declaration after studying damage reports submitted by the state. That agency earlier rejected the state’s request for individual assistance programs in the six counties, designed to help those who saw damage to homes or businesses. Branstad says state officials will continue to press for that aid. FEMA spokesman Bob Josephson says his agency will consider whatever applications the state submits.