Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery: Eric Koontz's Story
Eric Koontz is a pastor and a father of three young children living in the Lynchburg, Virginia area. Eric is an avid athlete — he's always enjoyed trail running, participating in races, and playing racquetball. In 2012, he began to notice he was having trouble catching his breath after some of these activities. Initially, Eric thought he was coming down with the flu so he stopped into his local doctor's office to get a check-up. After some tests, Eric was told that he was actually showing symptoms of mitral valve prolapse, or MVP.
MVP is a fairly common heart disorder in which the flaps don't work properly. This may cause blood flow to become irregular or even flow in the wrong direction.
Eric and his wife, Mary, were told there wasn't much to do at first, but his symptoms started to worsen over time. They made the decision to see specialists at UVA Heart & Vascular Center. Gorav Ailawadi, MD, gave the Koontz family several options — one of which was a minimally invasive technique that would shorten his recovery time by several months.
After a successful surgery, Eric has been able to return to his trail runs and racquetball games, and Eric and Mary have continued to grow their family.
Watch Eric's story here.
Subscribe to Healthy Balance
Get timely health and wellness tips from UVA Health experts. Plus, stories that will move you.
Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery
I have a condition called MVP. The blood, as it's flowing into the heart, it actually goes back out. At that time, I was active. I was consistently at the gym, playing racquetball, trail running. That was just how I exercised. I began to notice that my conditions began to change. Exercising was harder.
As a wife, I wanted to do whatever I could to help him get this fixed. I needed my husband back. I needed their father back.
I was at the office one day, and I kind of ran up the stairs as I always did. And when I got to the top, I was pretty winded. And I was like, whoa. And I kind of caught my breath.
I was just exhausted in the evenings. And yeah, there was a change happening. I thought I was sick, had a cold, the flu, something like that. So I did what anyone would do, go to the doctor, right?
When we found out that it was worse, I had a brand-new baby. He'd gotten to where he couldn't help me with the children. He couldn't really pick them up without getting tired. And he couldn't bathe them anymore.
So clearly, we knew here at home that something was wrong. And we're so close to UVA that it was such a natural next step. So we made an appointment. And as soon as we could, we got up there. And so happy that we met Dr. Ailawadi our first time in the door.
At UVA, we offer essentially every approach and treatment to valve disease, ranging from major open surgery and redo surgery to minimally invasive surgery.
God had put us in a right place at the right time. And he was the only guy in their team of surgeons who did this one procedure, out of 8 or 10 heart guys. So it was a less invasive procedure, where they don't have to do open heart surgery.
For Eric, this was the best option for a number of reasons. He's young and very healthy, had a very vibrant life, wanted to get back to work, and has small children and wanted to be able to pick them up as quickly as possible. Because of those things, we felt like this approach would be a big benefit for someone like Eric.
For our marriage, a big way this has impacted it is just being able to be there for each other, conversations and-- I didn't know I was going to get so emotional.
I'm just grateful for the learning experience and getting to see the man that I married go through something like this. I'm really happy that we have him back.
I've got a lot of life left to live. And I think I really owe that to the team who did the surgery.
