At Swedish Medical Center, the answer is yes, under some circumstances. Physicians there are using conscious sedation, rather than general anesthesia, during a heart procedure called “transcatheter aortic valve replacement”(TAVR). In that procedure, a heart valve can be replaced without using traditional open heart surgery, with its attendant risks and complications. A thin catheter is threaded from a small incision an artery in the groin, and the new valve is moved through the catheter into position to be inserted in the diseased valve.

Conscious sedation is a combination of relaxers and a pain blocker, and it means the patient can be awake during surgery and may even be able to talk with doctors, without feeling any pain. This technique can also reduce recovery time as well as the risks associated with general anesthesia. Because it uses fewer hospital resources, it can also reduce costs for the patient and the hospital. Conscious sedation has been used for many years for less complex procedures, such as for endoscopy or colonoscopies. But making conscious sedation the norm for this kind of procedure is unique for Swedish.

The medical director for structural heart disease at Swedish noted that “[The new procedure] has made a dramatic difference for so many of our TAVR patients and is now the default choice for all TAVR procedures at Swedish.”