Pensioner goes home within hours of having heart valve replacement surgery

And Donald Raybould, from Chesterfield, said he cannot believe how good he feels just days after undergoing the pioneering ‘light touch’ procedure.

He went into the Northern General for the minimally invasive TAVI – transcatheter aortic valve implantation – procedure at 7.30am on and went home five hours after the operation.

The pioneering service, introduced by heart doctors and nurses at Sheffield Teaching Hospitals last year, enables patients aged 75 and over who have severe heart valve disease and who cannot undergo open-heart surgery due to their advancing age to have their heart valves replaced without the need for a general anaesthetic.

Patients typically go home two to three days after the procedure and have a shorter recovery period, but Donald made it home in record time.

“I went in at 7.30am with my little bag of stuff and I was expecting to stay in for at least a couple of days but whilst I was lying flat during the procedure the surgeon said, ‘with a little bit of luck we’ll get you home tonight’. I was amazed.”

A few hours later, the granddad-of-three, diagnosed with aortic stenosis – a severe narrowing of the heart valve – a year ago, had recovered enough to sit up and immediately noticed a difference.

“I had been lying flat after the surgery for a while, but when I finally got up and the bleeding had stopped, I felt so much better. I was amazed at how good I felt.”

Donald remained in the recovery area of the Northern General Hospital’s Chesterman but was fit and well enough to go home, and discharged by 5pm.

The former self-employed builder, who retired aged 67, said: “I’ve always been active, I do my gardening and my hobby is rebuilding old motorbikes in the garage, but my narrowed heart valve meant I could not work in the garden or fix up my beloved piles of rust.

“It’s only been a couple of days since my op, but I feel so much better. Before my op I’d been stopping twice to go upstairs or to the bathroom, but now I can go upstairs without any problem. It’s given me my life back.”