 I often get asked what TAVAR is and it stands for trans-catheter aortic valve replacement. What that is is a minimally invasive way of replacing the aortic valve for specifically the disease process called aortic stenosis. The aortic valve, which usually has three pieces that move freely, become encased in calcium and cholesterol and fuse together and instead of allowing for a large opening for the blood to leave the heart, a pinhole occurs. So now we need to open up the valve so that the heart can empty and feed the rest of the body. This allows us to avoid major open heart surgery, it's a much easier procedure for patients to go through. There was a lot of people before that TAVAR was available, were not even a candidate to have surgery done, now that brings all those people now to the forefront to have the opportunity to have the procedure done, because the risk of the procedure is so low, even the very elderly and the very sick patient can undergo TAVAR. So that's the most important aspect of the TAVAR procedure. Quality of life following surgical intervention versus TAVAR. Quality of life is better after TAVAR. This is why it was expanded to intermediate risk. Patients have an immediate relief of their shortness of breath, which is the limiting factor, and they are able to have an increase in their exercise tolerance. It's truly a multidisciplinary approach. There is no one person that can pull this off by themselves. Cardiac surgeons, interventional cardiologists, echocardiographers, and the team from the operating room cardiac surgery team as well as the cardiac authorization lab team getting involved to perform the procedure. The program has been in place for nearly five years now. We started in May of 2012 with our first patient. We were able to establish the program under the leadership of Dr. Neibart, who is the head of the cardiothoracic surgery. He saw this vision that this technology was going to become not only revolutionary, but take over traditional surgical valve replacement for the aortic valve in the future. Jersey Shore has become a definite regional leader in transcatheter aortic valve replacement, and for patients that live within the area, I don't see a reason for them to travel far. In addition, Jersey Shore has performed well over 400 of these transcatheter aortic valve replacements, and it goes to show on our record that we have extremely high success rates and a very, very low complication rate that outpaces most centers in the country, and because of that, I really see no reason for families or patients to leave the area to go to other major metropolitan areas that may be quite inconvenient for them.