Dr. John Randolph

Surgery remains a powerful tool for treating malfunctions and diseases of the heart. OCA physicians are on the forefront of new developments in "closed beating heart" surgery and employ new techniques for heart valve replacement.

In years past, the heart-lung bypass machine allowed patients to have life-saving "open heart" surgery with the heart stilled from beating as the surgeon made repairs. Today, new techniques allow the surgeon to make much smaller incisions without dramatically opening the heart - while operating on a beating heart.

The results are a dynamic growth in the alternatives available to a person with cardiovascular disease.

The physicians of OCA have been at the forefront of many of these developments and offer patients throughout the region the very latest in safe and effective treatment options

Dr. M. Bodenhammer

, including coronary artery bypass surgery, which can be performed by the traditional method of open-chest surgery or with the newer endoscopic, or “closed” surgical techniques.

Techniques used in heart valve surgery have improved in both the safety of surgical technology and in the prosthetic devices used when a heart valve must be replaced.

Chest surgery to treat diseases of the lungs and structures other than the heart has also been refined by similar advancements in surgical access to the chest (open and closed) and in instrumentation, allowing many people to have conditions treated surgically today that could not have been treated only decades ago.