100 Moments

10:10 10.10: Anatomy of a Moment

Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Pavilion 
Cleveland Clinic main campus

Cleveland
10:10 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Nobody can halt the relentless march of time. But we can put the very rhythm of life on hold. 

A 60-year-old man is on the operating table. His heart has been stopped temporarily. To orchestrate its resurrection, Lars Svensson, MD, PhD, will need only 30 minutes or so.

At this precise moment, Dr. Svensson is using a suture to pull back tissue between the heart’s filling chambers. This affords an unobstructed view of his target: the mitral valve, which regulates blood flow between the left atrium and the left ventricle. Support strings on one of the valve’s leaflets have ruptured, allowing blood to leak. 

With practiced precision, Dr. Svensson repairs the valve and secures it with a reinforcing band. During the surgery, a previously undetected hole in the heart is also discovered — and quickly fixed. 

Dr. Svensson is chief of the Sydell and Arnold Miller Family Heart, Vascular & Thoracic Institute and holder of the Delos M. Cosgrove, MD, Chair for Heart Disease. Since 2016, more than 4,600 successful mitral valve repairs have been performed without a death by Dr. Svensson and his colleagues at Cleveland Clinic, the top-ranked hospital in the nation for heart care for three decades and counting. 

The chances of this patient needing another such operation in the next 10 years are slim. “He should be set for life,” Dr. Svensson says. 

For now, in the cool stillness of OR 75, the clock on the wall reads 10:10. Biometrics flash across a monitor. The machinery of modern medicine hums and beeps softly in the background. And a sleeping heart waits to beat again. 

Photograph by Marty Carrick