Family face heart help trip
Jo Gaeta knew something was wrong about 18 months ago, when she lay in bed and heard thumping and felt like someone was choking her.
‘‘My husband kept saying to me ‘take deep breaths, take a deep breath’. But it just wasn’t happening.’’
The Wellington woman, now 80, has severe tricuspid regurgitation, or leaky valve – a relatively common type of heart disease which means the valve that helps move blood through the heart doesn’t close, allowing blood to flow backwards.
‘‘The heart’s working twice as hard, shovelling gravel out while gravel is coming in,’’ son Tony Gaeta explains.
‘‘So like any muscle, the more you work it, the bigger it gets. So mum’s heart is getting bigger and bigger.’’
Jo Gaeta and her family have also been told no-one in New Zealand can treat her, given the stage of her disease. Her only option is diuretic pills, also known as water pills, which treat symptoms to a point until the heart inevitably fails.
The Gaeta family are now on a mission to raise $140,000 to get to Toronto, Canada. There, a cardiologist can perform a valve replacement via a non-invasive procedure that would see a valve implanted via a catheter, which takes about an hour and would require her to be in hospital only a few days.
Waikato-based cardiologist Dr Rajesh Nair confirmed a condition as severe as Gaeta’s cannot be treated in New Zealand due to the limited approved therapies available – both in public and private.
The valve replacement the Gaetas are pursuing, named the
Cardiovalve, was still in the trial phase overseas, Nair said.
Nair, who works privately with Midland Cardiovascular Services, championed a valve clip device available privately, but Gaeta’s condition is now too severe for this procedure.
He has been involved in designing another valve, that would work for Gaeta, but again, no trials or treatment are approved here. It was especially difficult to get trials approved in Aotearoa, particularly since the Covid-19 pandemic, ‘‘which is why we have to send the patient to Canada’’, Nair said.
Nair said tricuspid regurgitation was a silent killer. Murmurs can be difficult for specialists to diagnose and the condition can linger a long
time until the condition becomes severe.
‘‘It takes a long time for patients to fall really, really sick. And by the time they come to us or get referred, they are fairly advanced.
‘‘At that point, it is already too late.’’
Open heart surgery then comes with a high risk of death and complications, as the heart is too weak, Nair said.
Tony Gaeta is adamant his mother could have been treated here with Nair’s clip valve, called the MitraClip, had the family been connected with the right specialist cardiologists sooner.
Jo Gaeta said all she wanted was to breathe again: ‘‘ To go for walks, potter around, do my garden and be a little more active.’’