'To bring significant contributions to the team, people had to be willing to set aside their own agendas and egos.' 'We wanted passionate physicians who were team players,' Dr. After collaborating with other cardiovascular leaders across the country, they knew the best patient outcomes would be delivered by a multidisciplinary team of cardiovascular professionals. Ofenloch and Rovin assembled a heart team. While the hybrid suite was being constructed, Drs. A hybrid operating room can provide advanced imaging for complex cardiovascular surgery requiring x-ray (fluoroscopic imaging), including TAVR. By December 2011, with funding from the Morton Plant Mease HealthCare Foundation, that shell was transformed into a hybrid operating room, the first of its kind in the Tampa Bay region. One of the rooms from the original Morgan Heart Hospital project had been left empty as a shell for future growth. Hoce grasped their vision and collaborated with the surgeons, building a facility to perform the surgery and developing an experienced team to accomplish their goal. The two shared their vision for a multidisciplinary heart team and an Advanced Valve and Structural Heart Center at Morton Plant with then hospital president, Kris Hoce, and cardiology leaders. Rovin joined John Ofenloch, MD, cardiovascular surgeon, and chief of Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery at MPH. Though the first TAVR procedure was done in 2012, the vision started years earlier in 2008 when Dr. Instead of opening the chest, doctors insert a catheter into an artery, usually in the groin area, and guide it into the heart, implanting a new aortic heart valve inside the original diseased valve. TAVR is a minimally invasive heart valve replacement surgery used to treat severe aortic stenosis, or narrowing of the aortic valve, which increases the workload and strain on the heart.

Joshua Rovin, MD, FACS, cardiovascular surgeon and medical director of Morton Plant Hospital’s Center for Advanced Valve and Structural Heart Care, studies a real-time image of his patient’s chest while performing the TAVR procedure.

John Gone by Michael Kayatta