A Heart to Hold

Dennis Stora

Twelve years after going through surgery to replace his aortic valve, 69-year-old Dennis Stora started complaining of chronic fatigue and shortness of breath.  He was found to have developed a paravalvular leak and was initially advised to undergo a second surgery to repair the valve. Eventually he was referred to Henry Ford Hospital, where a team of doctors and imagers were pioneering something new.

After an unsuccessful attempt to plug the leak in the cath lab, Dr. William O’Neill consulted with the structural heart imaging department for the hospital as well as the 3-D printing program at Henry Ford Innovations. They sent Stora for a CT, discharged him home, and then got down to work.

Over the next month, O’Neill and Wang did some troubleshooting with plastic models of Stora’s heart that they printed at their in-house 3-D print lab and eventually identified exactly where Stora’s defect was and how to best approach repairing it.

Twenty-four hours after his procedure, Stora and his family, including his 9-year-old granddaughter, were ready to have him go home. But before they left, the team handed Dennis a 3-D print of his heart for he and his granddaughter to take home. She was amazed that she could hold her grandfather’s heart in her hands.