‘Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith’: Dublin man’s life changed by new form of heart surgery

Дата публикации: 19-08-2026 12:00:29

Dubliner Derek Toomey (62) could not walk for more than a few minutes before having procedure at Dublin’s Mater hospital

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Before this summer, Derek Toomey couldn’t walk for more than a few minutes without taking a break to catch his breath.

The 62-year-old grandfather, from Finglas in north Dublin, had lived with heart problems for most of his life and was in 2023 diagnosed with a severely narrowed, calcified mitral valve.

Toomey was told a conventional operation carried too great a risk because of his severe underlying lung disease and no treatment was available for his heart.

But when the Mater hospital in Dublin began to do a minimally invasive heart surgery earlier this year, he suddenly “had the opportunity to get my life back”.

The hospital is the first in Ireland to carry out a fully percutaneous – meaning through the skin – mitral valve replacement, offering patients an alternative to conventional open-heart surgery for the treatment of mitral valve disease.

Conventional heart surgery requires the chest to be opened through the breast bone. However, this method allows a new mitral valve to be inserted through a catheter tube into a vein in the groin.

For some patients, whose overall health means conventional surgery would carry a high level of risk, it offers a route to treatment where previously there was none.

Consultant cardiologist Prof Ivan Casserly, one of the members of the multidisciplinary team who carries out these procedures, said it allows patients a much quicker recovery time when compared to the more conventional surgery.

“It only became available in Europe in the middle of last year. The Mater group got trained at the end of last year and we started doing cases in March. We’ve done five cases so far,” he said.

“With open-heart surgery, people will generally be in ICU for seven days, and will be in hospital for seven to 14 days. With our procedure, there’s generally no ICU involved ... and generally admissions will be for three to five days. But the patient is fully mobile the next day and when they go home they’re fully independent.”

Casserly said this is a “major milestone in cardiac care”, but that “not everybody will be eligible”.

“It is not a panacea. It will be applicable now for patients who are at prohibitive surgical risk and who are anatomically suitable but I assume in time newer technology will come out,” he added.

Toomey only underwent the surgery on June 12th, but his life has changed since that date.

“I was off sick for seven weeks. I was in hospital for seven days. And I’m back in work now for two weeks. Sometimes you have to take a leap of faith with these new procedures; the doctors know what they’re doing,” he said.

“Life before was very laboured in terms of breathing, moving or carrying out any physical exercise. I’ve been given the opportunity to get my life back. Now it’s up to me to get myself strong again.”

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