Local Teacher Has Heart Valve Surgery after Mystery Symptoms

Lehigh Valley, Pa. (Aug. 15, 2008) – Whitehouse Station resident Ken Thompson was awakened one day in April by a strange noise coming from somewhere in his upper chest. He wasn’t snoring, but he did need medical attention.

“It was a gurgling sound coming out of my mouth,” he says.

The computer science teacher at Voorhees High School was puzzled and alarmed: “I realized it only happened when I exhaled.”

After several nights of waking to this rumbling, Thompson, 62, went to his family doctor, who sent him to cardiologist Dubravka Starcevic, M.D., of Hunterdon Cardiovascular Associates. A scan of his heart revealed the connective tissue of one of his heart valves was damaged, keeping the valve from closing properly, letting blood to back up into his lungs.

Called mitral valve prolapse, this condition occurs in 2 percent of all adults, affecting men and women equally. In most cases, the condition doesn’t require treatment. But because Thompson’s condition made him fatigued and short of breath, Starcevic recommended surgery to treat him.

“She said I was a mystery,” Thompson recalls, because he had no heart disease or other reasons to have this condition.

Starcevic told Thompson his choices for his surgery: Morristown Memorial Hospital or Raymond Singer, M.D., at Lehigh Valley Hospital in Allentown, Pa. Thompson reviewed their Web sites, along with those of University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Cedars Sinai in New York City.

A fellow educator whose parents both had heart surgery at LVH also recommended LVH and surgeon Raymond Singer, M.D.

“I looked at his Web site and was impressed at his experience. I made an appointment with him,” Thompson says.

Singer explained Thompson’s options were replacing the valve or repairing it, which his patient preferred. “He told me I had a 90 percent chance of having it repaired, so I wouldn’t need a new valve.”

Singer explains, “We prefer to repair mitral valves rather than replace them with prosthetic (artificial) valves, because it preserves heart function and the patient doesn’t require blood-thinning medicine.”

A member of Lehigh Valley Heart and Lung Surgeons at LVH, Singer learned advanced mitral valve repair techniques from Dr. Alain Carpentier, an international leader in valve surgery, in Paris, France.

It took less than three-hours at LVH on June 30 for Singer to remove the damaged part of Thompson’s valve and reconstruct it using fine sutures. He also sewed a plastic ring around the valve to improve its sealing ability, so there wouldn’t be backflow of blood into Thompson’s lungs. Thompson recovered in LVH for three days, then returned to his New Jersey home to recuperate.

He’s busy preparing to teach advanced placement computer JAVA programming in the fall to high-school seniors for the first time, following a summer vacation that was anything but routine.

A premier academic community hospital, Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network includes three hospital facilities – two in Allentown and one in Bethlehem, Pa. – Lehigh Valley Health Services, providing home health, hospice, pharmaceutical and health management services and the 400-member Lehigh Valley Physician Group of primary care and specialist physicians. In 2008, US News & World Report named Lehigh Valley Hospital one of America’s Best Hospitals for the thirteenth straight year. LVHHN’s advanced regional resources include a Level I Trauma Center with added pediatric qualifications, regional Burn Center as well as kidney and pancreas transplant, perinatal/neonatal, cardiac, cancer care, and neurology and complex neurosurgery capabilities. LVHHN hospitals are designated national Magnet hospitals for excellence in nursing. LVH is one of Pennsylvania’s largest teaching hospitals and is a major teaching campus of Penn State's College of Medicine.

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