Announcer:
Welcome to Cleveland Clinic Cardiac Consult, brought to you by the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family, Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute at Cleveland Clinic.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Hi, I'm Eric Roselli, the Chief of Adult Cardiac Surgery, and the Surgical Director of the Aorta Center, here at the Cleveland Clinic. Thinking about what's happened over the last 20 years, it's been really remarkable in the aorta space. Aortic volume was growing in the early 2000s and they recruited Lars Svensson to really build an aorta center back then. And it was basically Lars Svensson and Bruce Lytle doing a growing number of aortic operations when I was hired in 2005. I was so excited to help expand this effort and it's been remarkable to see what's happened over the last nearly 20 years with our team. Now we have many surgeons as part of this aortic team, including Xiaoying Lou, who's with me today.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Thank you. So, I did my training at Emory, and I came here for an aortic year, with you and the whole team; Dr. Svensson, Dr. Vargo, Dr Koprivanac, and the rest of the crew.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Yeah.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Had a phenomenal experience. It's a true privilege to be able to stay here as staff now and be a part of this team. The main reasons that I wanted to come here was the incredible volume of cases here. I think there were over 1500, 1600 aortic cases –
Eric Roselli, MD:
Amazing.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
... alone in 2023 at the Cleveland Clinic. I was able to be a part of many of those. So, it was an amazing experience. I think we do so many kinds of cases here from root replacements and valve replacements to ascending stent grafts and ascending open cases and arches, and B-SAFER's and Endo Care for, all throughout the aorta and down to the iliacs here. So, I think being a part of that has been incredible, and it's been wonderful to be part of the team here.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Well, I'm glad that we were able to recruit you to stay.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Thank you.
Eric Roselli, MD:
And you thought it was an easy choice. That's good to know.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Because it's been just so fun to see the development of what we do as a multidisciplinary team working with our vascular surgery colleagues and cardiologists here who actually take a ton of interest in the aorta from so many different perspectives, including imaging and basic science research. Something like a total arch replacement has become almost a routine operation –
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Right, it has. Yeah.
Eric Roselli, MD:
... for us here and the way we share ideas. Where do you think it's going?
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Yeah. There's so many directions. I think there's constant innovation happening at the clinic at all levels of the aorta, from valve down to the iliacs, as we were saying. There are more and more hybrid options for patients. I think that's what's really incredible about this place, there's so many innovators that, led by Dr. Svensson and you over the years to constantly change the practice and offer more options for patients. Many of the patients who come here are super complex. They've been turned down at other centers. I think what's really cool about this place is that the aortic team comes together and comes up with a plan that's usually very novel and innovative and can entail hybrid approaches, endovascular treatments, staged operations to get them something that's going to be safe and durable. So that's what's a really cool thing. And the research is building as well. I think we're doing all kinds of cool research from, at a tissue level, biomechanics level, that's going to change how we treat patients lifelong in the future.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Yeah, it's been really cool. I get so excited about our work every day because we continue to discover things. Certainly one of the greatest opportunities here is the way we work together. So, when patients come to us and they have an aortic problem, we can provide a precision decision.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Precision decision.
Eric Roselli, MD:
Where we all come together and can really tailor it to that unique patient because we can offer everything and even things maybe we haven't thought of before.
Xiaoying Lou, MD:
Right.
Eric Roselli, MD:
I'm glad you mentioned the research element, because that's been really interesting to see how things we learn in the lab can translate pretty quickly into what we do in our patient care. We're excited to talk about aortic disease and the care that we provide here at the Aortic Center, and we're looking forward to the growing learning process and taking care of more and more patients every day at the Cleveland Clinic Aortic Center here in the Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute.
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