Just twenty-four hours after a heart procedure Leonid Katsnelson, 72, of West Hartford was singing the praises of his UConn Health cardiovascular surgeons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe it. I feel no pain,\u201d says Katsnelson, who is no longer short of breath or fatigued from his aortic stenosis, the narrowing of his aortic heart valve. \u201cI am very happy. I feel amazing. I thought I felt good, but now I feel the difference after the TAVR procedure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Katsnelson was discharged on the last day of September from UConn John Dempsey Hospital.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/IMG_4890-300x225.jpg\")
He first came to the United States in 1993 with his wife Galina and two children. \u201cI came to the US and Connecticut for more opportunities, and lots of my family were already here,\u201d says the retired nursing home maintenance worker and part-time pizza deliveryman who loves to drive.<\/p>\n
But seven years ago on Sept. 22, 2015, he had a massive heart attack. Sadly, his sister had earlier died of a heart attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt not so good and had shortness of breath when walking. I immediately knew it was my heart. I remember I took a glass of milk and it fell from my hand. I lost all strength. I felt an empty feeling and numbness,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
His wife called 9-1-1 and the ambulance took him to UConn Health, where he first crossed paths with Pat and Jim Calhoun Cardiology Center\u2019s Dr. JuYong Lee, who quickly restored blood flow to his heart with cardiac stents.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was given a zero percent chance to survive due to cardiogenic shock,\u201d recalls his daughter Eleonora Laber. \u201cBut Dr. Lee saved his life seven years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI am very lucky. Dr. Lee is not a doctor, he\u2019s magic!\u201d says Katsnelson.<\/p>\n
But recently Katsnelson\u2019s aortic valve was becoming narrowed, Lee noticed at a follow-up appointment. Lee recommended that he have a newly available procedure at UConn Health called TAVR (Transcatheter aortic valve replacement).<\/p>\n UConn Health\u2019s new TAVR Program combines the surgical expertise of\u00a0Dr. Chittoor B. Sai Sudhakar<\/a>, chief of cardiothoracic surgery who has significant experience in the field of TAVR over the last 13 years, and\u00a0Lee,<\/a> who serves as a lead of the structural heart program, director of vascular medicine, endovascular medicine, and the non-invasive vascular laboratory.<\/p>\n The program also includes a dedicated coordinator (Kristen Bryant), experienced Cath Lab staff (Patricia Fagan and others), APRNs (Wendi Carrol and Tao Wang) as well as an echocardiographer (Dr. Supriya Tigadi), cardiac anesthesiologists (Dr. Jason Altman, Dr. Rabi Panigrahi and others), interventional cardiologists (Dr. Michael Azrin and Dr. Wael El Mallah), and radiologists (Drs. Clifford Yang, Electra Kaloudis and Jonathan Hargreaves).<\/p>\n \u201cMy father wouldn\u2019t be alive if it wasn\u2019t for Dr. Lee and also Dr. Sai and their UConn Health teams,\u201d says Katsnelson\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n Wife Galina and daughter Eleonora are both overjoyed with the successful TAVR procedure\u2019s immediate outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cMy Dad can talk, walk, and he\u2019s going home with us! He has a lot to look forward to,\u201d Eleonora says. \u201cHe now is filled with so much joy!\u201d<\/p>\n Katsnelson wants the world to know all about UConn Health, its excellent care, and the fellow joy of its health care workforce.<\/p>\n \u201cI love UConn Health. The people here have helped me so much. Everybody is happy here and smiling – every single person from the moment of walking into the hospital to the moment of discharge,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Narrowing of the aortic valve can occurs as we age when calcium builds up around the valve\u2019s opening restricting proper blood flow to the rest of the body. The common older adult heart condition affects more than 20% of those over the age of 65.<\/p>\n The aortic stenosis warning signs<\/strong>, which if left untreated can lead to heart failure or even death, may include:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is critical for older adults, along with their primary care physicians and cardiologists, to be aware of the early warning signs of aortic stenosis to ensure a rapid diagnosis of the condition so a lifesaving minimally invasive intervention such as TAVR can be offered,\u201d says Sai, chief of cardiothoracic surgery at UConn Health.<\/p>\n \u201cAortic valve stenosis is very easy to detect by echocardiography which is a heart ultrasound when physicians can listen for murmur in the chest,\u201d says Lee.<\/p>\n \u201cTAVR gives a lot of older patients, who may not be good candidates for open heart surgery, the opportunity to get relief from their symptoms and get back to enjoying their lives rather quickly. It\u2019s quite remarkable to see the impact it has on patients and their families,\u201d says Bryant, Structural Heart Program Coordinator.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Minimally invasive Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TAVR) Procedure at UConn Health is already making aortic stenosis patients at UConn Health quickly feel better<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":191590,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1969,2193,2231,2235,179],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[1873],"class_list":["post-191583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cardiology","category-hartford-county","category-health-well-being","category-today-homepage","category-uconn-health"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-13 10:50:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191583"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":192949,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191583\/revisions\/192949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/191590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191583"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=191583"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=191583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/TAVR-first-case-300x225.jpg\")
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/IMG_4897-300x225.jpg\")
\n