The catheter era matures: TAVR and the accredited heart-failure program

2017 — 2021

Valve replacement without opening the chest: Lutheran's later cardiac milestones are adoption firsts — the bringing of new techniques to the region ahead of its peers — and they are printed at the network's own scopes. Lutheran Hospital was, in its network's formulation, the first hospital in northern Indiana to offer transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR), the catheter-delivered heart valve for patients who cannot endure open surgery; the year of the first procedure is not stated in the network sources reached, and none is printed. In November 2017 the hospital announced it was first in the region to perform the TAVR procedure without general anesthesia. In June 2020 the American College of Cardiology's Transcatheter Valve Certification went to Lutheran as one of the first ten facilities nationwide to receive it, and the first in Indiana. In March 2021 the ACC's Advanced Heart Failure Accreditation made Lutheran one of only two hospitals in the country, and the only hospital in Indiana, holding it. The hospital also carries the Joint Commission's advanced certification for ventricular assist devices. These are certifications of a program built across the half-century since the 1970 bypass — the record of a community hospital that kept placing itself at the front of the region's cardiology, stated, as throughout this section, in its sources' own words.

Sources:

1. Lutheran Health Network releases — the first TAVR performed in the region without general anesthesia (20–21 November 2017); ACC Transcatheter Valve Certification, one of the first ten facilities nationwide and the first in Indiana (18 June 2020); ACC Advanced Heart Failure Accreditation, one of only two in the country and the only hospital in Indiana (31 March 2021), naming the medical director of the Heart Transplant and Ventricular Assist Device programs.
2. Lutheran Hospital, Interventional Cardiology and About pages (Lutheran Health Network) — "the first hospital in northern Indiana to offer TAVR"; the Joint Commission advanced certification for ventricular assist devices; the first-in-Indiana transcatheter valve certification.