Phil Passen was an active runner and boxer for decades. He worked in finance while raising a 9-year-old daughter, jogging dozens of miles each week and regularly competing in park races.
He thought he was healthy and doing well, so he was shocked when his doctor at NYU Langone Health told him he had a congenital heart defect that had never been detected.
“I My Annual Health Check “… My doctor noticed a heart murmur in me and knew it was a bit abnormal,” said Passen, 53. “Just to be safe, he recommended I get more tests done. A stress test didn’t find anything, but he started doing ultrasounds and found out I have a bicuspid aortic valve.”
Phil Passen / NYU Langone
A bicuspid valve is a condition in which the aorta has only two valves instead of the usual three. A bicuspid valve can become calcified, narrowing the valve and making it harder for blood to flow properly. The condition is usually corrected with surgery, but when Passen’s condition was first discovered in 2016, he wasn’t at that stage yet. Instead, Passen and his family entered a “wait and see” period. Every year, Passen had regular heart tests to monitor his condition.
“I had this mindset of, ‘This is something that needs to be monitored, so we can’t just mess around with it,'” Passen said. “So if the symptoms become severe, we just have to do what we need to do and not ignore the symptoms.”
Two things happened in 2020: The COVID-19 pandemic hit the US, and the Passen family relocated to Miami, Florida. Passen hadn’t yet found a cardiologist in his new city, and he avoided doctor’s appointments in the early stages of the pandemic. He wasn’t alone: 41% of people reported missing medical appointments during the early months of the pandemic. According to the American Medical Association.
Passen for three years, Regular check-upsHe told CBS News he still runs 25 to 30 miles a week and has no worrisome symptoms like shortness of breath, chest pain or lightheadedness. In April 2023, he finally made an appointment with his doctor in Florida to hear the news he’d dreaded.
“They said, ‘You have to have heart valve surgery right away,’ which was totally unexpected,” Passen said. “It was a life-changing moment because all of a sudden it was no longer an elective procedure and they said I had to have this surgery, and I had to have it right away. It was probably the most stressful moment of my life.”
Finding a second opinion and new options
Passen decided to seek a second opinion from his previous cardiology team, and after an initial consultation that told him he needed surgery within the next few months, he had a follow-up appointment with cardiothoracic surgeon Mark Peterson, M.D., chief of aortic surgery at NYU Langone, to discuss his options.
The two most common surgeries each had their drawbacks. Passen could have had aortic valves replaced with one derived from an animal, but those valves tend to need replacing after about 10 years, necessitating further surgery in the future. Another option would be a prosthetic valve made from pyrolytic carbon, but Passen would have to take blood thinners for the rest of his life and would be unable to play contact sports. The prosthetic option also would have a negative impact on lifespan, Peterson said.
Haley Ricciardi
So Peterson offered Passen a third option, a complex procedure called the Ross procedure, in which the aortic valve would be replaced with the patient’s own pulmonary valve, and the pulmonary valve would be replaced with a donor valve, Peterson said.
“The Ross procedure is obviously a little more complicated than a standard tissue or mechanical valve replacement, but the short-term complexity pays off in the long-term,” Peterson said. “The procedure restores survival to normal life expectancy, eliminates the need for anticoagulant medications, and patients generally enjoy an excellent quality of life.”
It was a riskier choice, but it was one that would give Passen the life he wanted.
“I simply decided that it was worth it to have a more complicated surgery and lower the risk of having to have another surgery in 10 years,” Passen said. “I didn’t want to go through the horror of having to get a new heart valve again, when we can do a procedure that will greatly reduce the chance of that happening.”
Once the decision was made, Passen began training for the operation as if he were a competitive athlete, sticking to a rigorous exercise regimen from December through to March in the hopes that staying in shape would speed up his recovery. Then finally, the day of surgery arrived.
NYU Langone Health
The Ross surgery took about four hours, Peterson said. Passen’s surgery went smoothly, and within two hours of waking up from the procedure, he was walking laps around the intensive care unit, Peterson said. He was released from the hospital two and a half days later.
Nearly six months after his surgery, Passen has returned to running regularly and even took a summer trip to France with his family, and he credits the Ross procedure for speeding up his recovery and getting him back to the training activities he loves.
Passen said she hopes her story will encourage others to monitor their health.
“one time Age 40 or older“Not only should you get a physical exam every year, but you should also get your heart checked,” Peterson says. “There are a lot of issues out there that you don’t know about, and the sooner you can catch them, the easier it will be to address.”
