Atmore resident undergoes heart procedure, back to her chores

Whether it’s cutting grass, raking leaves or doing general housework, 83-year-old Dorothy Moore can do it all.

The Atmore resident isn’t going to slow down anytime soon after receiving a valve-in-valve transcatheter aortic valve replacement at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s hospital on April 27.

Moore, who has had heart problems, said she had a pig valve put in in 2004, just 10 years before having her most recent procedure. The Federal Drug Administration hasn’t approved the valve-in-valve procedure.

“All I know is that it was hurting me so bad,” she said. “I had a pig valve put in in 2004 as a replacement for my valve. I guess it lasted me 10 years, and it ran out.

“I’m doing great now,” she said.

Up until the valve-in-valve replacement surgery, Moore hadn’t had any heart problems, but took medicine for her blood pressure. However, she could feel herself slowing down week by week. She began to experience shortness of breath and would often have to sit down after going short distances.

Moore said her son, Glenn, who works at Shelby County Medical Center as an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) technician, put her in touch with Dr. James Davies, who performed the procedure.

“It was different, but let me tell you something, this was much easier than the first one,” Moore said. “It went up through my groin. They did it on a Monday and I was sitting at my son’s house at dinner on Thursday.”

To perform the procedure, surgeons go through the groin or the best access site they can find to replace the old valve without taking it out and without using the heart-lung machine. This means the patient is not required to have his or her heart stopped while the new valve is put within the old one.

Moore said she stayed with her son until June 2, when she decided it was time to come back home to Atmore.

Nowadays, one will find her outside of her East Oak Street home raking leaves or inside doing odds and ends.

“I think it was great,” Moore said about the procedure. “It was something that I would recommend anybody to go through.”