I had known for quite some time that my heart health, and that of my children, might be at risk. My father and uncle both sadly passed away from Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, possibly Brugada syndrome – a life-threatening, inherited arrhythmia. For this reason, I have had my children annually monitored since birth in case they had inherited the condition too.

Unfortunately, things took a difficult turn for Myself in early 2018, when doctors detected unusual electrical activity in My daughters heart during one of their routine tests. To be safe, doctors implanted a loop recorder device in Her chest to continuously monitor its activity and detect anything suspicious as soon as possible.

Despite this I felt concerned about the health of my own heart. Despite my family history, my doctors were not routinely monitoring my heart and so I went to her GP to get it checked – just in case. Luckily, I wasn’t found to have problems with my heart rhythm, but my doctors did find my ascending aorta to be enlarged at the root.

An aortic root aneurysm is caused by the weakening of the walls of the ascending thoracic aorta, causing it to bulge. They often grow slowly and don’t exhibit any symptoms to start, making them difficult to detect. following my diagnosis, my doctors gave me treatment to control my blood pressure but recommended a ‘watch and wait’ approach before considering surgery to correct her aneurysm. They felt that as the enlargement was relatively small and I didn’t have many symptoms, they could just continue to monitor my condition.

It was found my aortic valve to have a moderate-to-severe leak, caused by the aortic root aneurysm. As this could be serious if not corrected, Dr D’Souza referred Me to the care of Mr Cesare Quarto, consultant cardiac surgeon at RB&HH Specialist Care to help find a surgical solution, which was the David’s procedure: this second part is an extract from the Case studies Autumn/Winter 2019 edition in which I featured because of my procedure. What this doesn’t tell you is that when the surgeon’s opened me up they found I also had a life threatening dissection and that my Aorta was hanging on by a thread, which James told me after the op.

“A healthy aortic valve normally closes after blood is pumped out of the heart, to prevent the backflow of blood. As an aortic root aneurysm stretches the aortic valve, it cannot fully close, resulting in blood flowing back into the heart. This valve leakage can lead to a range of complications, including blood clots and organs not receiving enough blood.

The David Procedure is a surgical technique which spares a healthy aortic valve, by replacing the weakened section of the ascending aorta with an artificial tube graft. As the stretching pressure of the aneurysm is removed from the healthy aortic valve after surgery, it can return to its normal function.

“The David Procedure is unfortunately not suitable for every patient with an aortic root aneurysm, as it depends on their aortic valve being healthy.

Shelley had the David Procedure a month later as she didn’t want to wait any longer. After a one-week hospital stay, she was referred to a local cardiac rehabilitation team and has since made a full recovery