Our family are looking for any support, to help get our mum, Paula, a chance to recieve a potentially life Saving operation.

Mums cardiac symptoms started 6 years ago and have got progressively worse to the point where her symptoms are now greatly affecting her daily life. Most of the time, she is homebound and has to make repeated trips to A & E with heart-attack like symptoms where all they can do is treat her for the chronic pain and exhaustion she experiences. More recently, she has not been able to work, is unable to walk far, and unable to manage her daily tasks without help and support.

These unmanageable symptoms and intolerable quality of life are due to her coronary arteries which have damaged linings, inappropriately constrict, have malfunctions in their tiny branches and are squeezed from a left anterior descending myocardial bridge. This condition results when a major artery runs through the muscle of the heart rather than resting on top of the organ. This myocardial bridge can also lead to sudden cardiac death.

This is a little-known heart anomaly which often confounds doctors, who don't know how to treat it; most cardiologists are completely at a loss. They know myocardial bridges exist, but they have been taught they are benign and never cause problems. There is no surgery currently conducted in the UK for this condition. Mums medication is no longer effective so the only way forward is for her to undergo a procedure called myocardial bridge unroofing which should bring significant symptomatic improvement and reduce the risk of sudden cardiac death.

Whilst surgery for myocardial bridges is carried out in a few sites in the USA, they involve invasive open heart surgery where you open the chest and expose the heart. There are concerns that healthy heart muscle could be damaged during the operation which has slowed its adoption.

Stanford (USA) is the only site where they use new imaging techniques to map the bridge muscle very precisely, and they perform the unroofing with conservative surgical techniques avoiding open heart surgery, to safeguard the healthy heart muscle. The number performed at Stanford has increased substantially in the past 5 years and for patients who have a poor quality of life where they can’t find any other way, it is a viable, safe and effective option for improving physical limitations, angina symptoms, and overall quality of life.

https://stanfordhealthcare.org/stanford-health-now/2012/robles-ekg.html