Dr. Marcos Nores – JFK Medical Center – TAVR Procedure

One other type of minimally invasive surgery that we're not involved with, I would say, it's probably one the least invasive surgeries that we're currently doing is a procedure called TAVI and that involves an implantation of an aortic valve through a catheter that goes through the groin on occasions and sometimes through a small incision on the left chest—that's a fairly new procedure. We've been doing it here at JFK for about a little over a year now and within the U.S., there's only a few centers that are involved with that procedure, but that is the really good procedure especially and only at this point of proof or very- patients who are not yet candidates for surgery (for traditional surgery), so that population of patients who didn't really have a good option at that point before are now offered this procedure that is gonna improve the quality of life and uh in some occasions also improve the survival of the patient.