Englewood Health earns national certification for heart valve program

Dawn Furnas//February 1, 2022//

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Englewood Health TAVR team members. From left, front row: Dr. Adam Arnofsky, Dr. Aron Schwarcz, Dr. Molly Schultheis, Dr. Robert Ferrante, Denise Goldstein, Raena Kidangan and Dr. Omar Hasan. Back row: Dr. Ramin Hastings, Dr. Richard Goldweit, Dr. Michael Benz, Dr. Lance Kovar and Dr. Joseph De Gregorio. - ENGLEWOOD HEALTH — Englewood Health TAVR team members. From left, front row: Dr. Adam Arnofsky, Dr. Aron Schwarcz, Dr. Molly Schultheis, Dr. Robert Ferrante, Denise Goldstein, Raena Kidangan and Dr. Omar Hasan. Back row: Dr. Ramin Hastings, Dr. Richard Goldweit, Dr. Michael Benz, Dr. Lance Kovar and Dr. Joseph De Gregorio. – ENGLEWOOD HEALTH

The American College of Cardiology has bestowed Englewood Health with the Transcatheter Valve Certification, which recognizes its Structural Heart and Valve Program in treating patients with valve disease using innovative, minimally invasive procedures.

Englewood Health is the first hospital in Bergen County, and among just three in the state and 70 in the country, to earn this honor, according to a Feb. 1 announcement.

To earn the certification, the program was evaluated over several months for its ability to meet the standards for multidisciplinary teamwork, formalized training, shared decision-making and high-quality performance as measured in national registries.

“Englewood Health has demonstrated its commitment to providing northern New Jersey with excellent heart care,” Dr. Deepak Bhatt, chair of the ACC Accreditation Management Board, said in a prepared statement. “ACC Accreditation Services is proud to award Englewood Health with the Transcatheter Valve Certification.”

According to Englewood Health, it was one of the first hospitals in the country to begin offering transcatheter aortic valve replacement — a minimally invasive heart valve replacement procedure — following its FDA approval in 2011. The procedure is used to treat aortic stenosis, a narrowing of the heart valve that may lead to shortness of breath, light-headedness and fatigue.

“The obvious benefit of the TAVR procedure is that there is no need for open heart surgery or the use of a heart/lung machine,” Dr. Ramin Hastings, medical director of the structural heart and valve program and interventional cardiologist at Englewood Health, said in the statement. “In the TAVR procedure, we use a thin tube to guide a new, artificial aortic valve into the heart to replace the damaged valve. TAVR has a shorter recovery time than open-heart surgery, the traditional method of valve replacement surgery, and gives patients a much-improved quality of life.”

The Englewood Health Structural Heart and Valve Program team has performed nearly 1,200 TAVR procedures to date.