CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A new procedure has been introduced in the Coastal Bend to help lower the risk of having a stroke. It's called Watchman.
Watchman is an hour-long procedure that requires little time spent at the hospital and is meant for patients who are reliant on strong blood thinners.
Most people on blood thinners suffer from atrial fibrillation, meaning a chamber in the heart isn't beating regularly, causing blood flow to slow down.
To make matters worse, there is a pouch in the heart where that blood clots up and if that clot breaks off, it could go to the brain and cause a stroke.
What the Watchman procedure does is take a tube with a device at the end of it that looks like a tiny umbrella. That tube gets inserted near the thigh and up to the heart where the umbrella-like device plugs up the pouch in the heart so blood can't clot there.
One Coastal Bend doctor who is capable of doing the procedure is Travis Taylor. Taylor said Watchman is something the Coastal Bend needs due to the amount of people who have heart problems.
"It's really an epidemic down here, and because so many people are on blood thinners, we have a lot of complications with blood thinners too, so this was really driven out of a need for patients," Taylor said.
Taylor has performed Watchman on three patients in the Coastal Bend so far and said the outcome has been successful. He encourages anyone inquiring about Watchman to contact their primary care doctor first.
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