“Being my fourth open heart surgery, I think inherently makes it much more complex going in,” she says. “They anticipated it would be a six-and-a-half-hour surgery, and it ended up being a 10-hour surgery.”

Dumbauld underwent a Ross procedure with a mitral valve and tricuspid valve repair, an extensive and complex surgery, Dr. Ismail El-Hamamsy says.

“The idea behind the Ross is that you’re putting your ‘best player’ in the aortic position,” he says. “Then you’re putting something that is not the patient’s own in apposition where the pressures are lower, the stresses are lower.”

The surgery allows Dumbauld to resume her exercises and travel without worry and without the need to put patients on medication for a lifetime.

“That’s the beauty of reconstructive valve surgery,” Adams says. “In the long term, these patients go about their normal life.”

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