February 1999 -- Trinity Heart Center opens, offering comprehensive cardiovascular services, including world-class open-heart surgery and interventional cardiology procedures. The Heart Center performed 230 open-heart procedures in its first year, many that included valve repair, replacement or repair of other heart defects.
 

October 2000  -- Trinity acquires its first six Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) through an $18,000 grant from the Trinity Health Foundation. These life-saving devices were placed on each of the inpatient units at Trinity Rock Island, and all non-critical care nursing and respiratory staff at Trinity was trained in their use.
 

October 2000 -- Construction was completed on Trinity's Heart Center, with the opening of the Center's state-of-the-art Medical Intensive Care unit. This spacious and comfortable unit on the first floor of Trinity Rock Island allows patients to recover in a pleasant home-like setting.
 

February 2001 -- Helbert Acosta, M.D., implanted the world's smallest dual-chamber pacemaker in a patient. The pacemaker, the Integrity Micro Autocapture Pacing System, is manufactured by St. Jude Medical. The 88-year-old patient who received the pacemaker suffered from Bradycardia, a slow heart rate of less than 60 beats per minute.  The following month Friends of Trinity donated a state-of-the-art Ensite Non-Contact Cardiac mapping system to detect and treat irregular heart rhythms.
 

June 2001 -- Trinity offers state-of-the-art Tran Myocardial Revascularization (TMR) Therapy. TMR uses a specialized carbon dioxide (CO2) laser to provide pain relief for patients with debilitating angina due to severe coronary artery disease. TMR uses a high-energy, computer-synchronized CO2 laser, called the Heart Laser System, to place channels through oxygen-deprived heart muscle. The procedure has been FDA-approved and has proven to be the only laser therapy that offers long-term (at least five years) of symptom relief for patients who suffer from severe angina that is not treatable by angioplasty or by bypass surgery.
 

December 2001 -- Trinity is the first in the Quad-Cities to use the revolutionary new Symmetry Bypass System Aortic Connector, a sutureless device that connects veins to the aorta on patients who have open-heart coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG).  Usually, heart surgeons sew or suture a vein from the leg to the aorta to go around or bypass the blocked vessel. This suturing can be difficult and time-consuming. With the new aortic connector, surgeons connected the vein to the aorta without any sutures. This procedure takes less time than traditional suturing, saving approximately five minutes per graft. This means less chance of trauma to the aorta and shorter operative times.
 

April 2003 -- Trinity was among the first heart programs in the nation to implant revolutionary, new drug-coated coronary stents (small wire-mesh tunnels to hold open arteries) in its Cardiac Cath Lab. FDA approval for the stents was received on April 24. Considered cutting-edge technology, the stents are coated in the medication Sirolimus, an immuno-suppressant drug traditionally used in transplant patients to prevent organ rejection.  When blockages of the coronary arteries that supply blood flow to the heart occur, physicians may treat them with a variety of techniques. Traditionally, these blockages have been treated several ways, including balloon angioplasty and stent placement, as well as surgery to bypass the blockages, based on which method the physician decides is best for the individual patient.

During balloon angioplasty, a catheter is inserted in the groin area and a small balloon is expanded within the blocked artery to restore blood flow. The balloon helps by pressing plaque back against the vessel wall. Stents have been used to help prevent recurrences of blockages, or restenosis, in balloon angioplasty procedures that were initially successful.
 

In about one-third of those procedures, a blockage can slowly recur within six months of the angioplasty due to scar tissue formation. When this occurs, another surgical procedure must take place to alleviate the blockage. The new drug-coated stents have been developed to provide sustained local delivery of agents, which help to reduce the degree of tissue growth after stent placement. This way, physicians can reduce the number of patients who must return for treatment of these blockages.
 

Summer 2004 --Trinity's surgeons team up with Loyola University's world-class heart program, one of the nation's largest. The 11 surgeons serving the Quad-Cities area belong to Cardiac Surgery Associates (CSA), a group of surgeons committed to excellence in the practice of cardiac, thoracic, and peripheral vascular surgery. The Trinity surgeons perform more than 2,000 open hearts every year, and the group's surgeons annually perform 3,500 open heart procedures and 4,000 vascular and thoracic cases. CSA is the largest of its kind in both Illinois and Iowa, and the fifth largest in the country.
 

Summer 2007 -- Juan Bonilla, MD, performs Trinity's first minimally-invasive heart valve surgery on Josh Witt of Davenport.