Henry Ford Hospital pioneers new cardiac approach

Doctors at Henry Ford Hospital have created a new route to the heart to implant an artificial heart valve by temporarily connecting major blood vessels that do not normally intersect.

In a July 3 operation on 79-year-old Viola Waller of Charlevoix, physicians performed a world-first cardiac procedure when it became evident that other means would not work.

‘I knew of an experimental technique that had not yet been done in humans, and I had a patient with no other options who was failing rapidly,’ says William O