New heart surgery technique:

Patient is already thinking about looking for mushrooms again

Happy about the new quality of life: Johannes Schmidauer with his Antonia(Bild: Tröster Andreas)

Johannes Schmidauer is the first patient in Salzburg to have a hard-to-access heart valve clipped using keyhole surgery. He is already thinking about mushroom hunting again. 

Johannes Schmidauer takes a deep breath: "Now I can breathe again," he says happily about his new quality of life and thanks the medical team led by cardiology primaria Uta Hoppe at Salzburg University Hospital.

"It was terrible," he recalls from the past. It made his chest really tight every time he took a breath. There was also painful water retention in his legs. Climbing stairs was out of the question. Schmidauer fell several times. His wife Antonia was and is always by his side.

Primaria Uta Hoppe shows the patient a heart clip(Bild: SALK)

The 88-year-old from Salzburg-Gnigl has been suffering from a weak heart for years. His leaky heart valves were no longer able to pump the oxygen-poor blood into the lungs and the oxygen-rich blood into the body.

Suffering comes to an end after surgery
For patients like him, only the symptoms could be treated. But there was no real relief. Now Johannes Schmidauer was the first patient in Salzburg to have his tricuspid valve, which is difficult to access, clipped using the keyhole technique. It was only a few years ago that this technique began to establish itself in North America. Primaria Hoppe and senior physician Wilfried Wintersteller operated the catheter and inserted the clips via the groin. Senior physician Thomas Wuppinger guided the imaging through the patient's body during the operation. He had brought the necessary knowledge to Salzburg after a stay in Vancouver (Canada).

Schmidauer looks amazingly fit so soon after the operation. "I'm feeling much better. I'll soon be going mushrooming again," he laughs, a lifelong mountain enthusiast.