PRAIRIE DOC®
  • Home
  • About
  • People
  • Television
  • Podcasts
  • Perspective
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Foundation
  • Book

A New Year and a New Era in Heart Attack Care

7/17/2018

 
It was New Year’s Eve, 1982, when I was called upon to assist a man who was experiencing unrelenting chest pain coupled with a foreboding sense of doom. I was new in town celebrating the changing of the year with friends when the emergency room called. 

Someone was having a heart attack, the result of a blockage in one of the coronary arteries that feeds a large segment of the muscles of his heart. The EKG showed that injury was occurring across the front part of the left ventricle, which is to say it was “the big one,” representing a significant chance of death. If he did survive, he could have had a profound weakening of the heart resulting in weakness and disability. For my patient, on a night when others were celebrating, the pain would not let up. This meant that permanent destruction was spreading to more and more of his heart.

It was the dawning of a new age for treating coronary artery blockages. In the 1960s a pediatric cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic began snaking skinny plastic tubes from the groin up and around the aortic arch. After injecting X-Ray dye, the coronary arteries could then be visualized under fluoroscopy. They called it an angiogram, coming from the Greek words angeion meaning “vessel” and gramma meaning “that which is written or drawn.”

In the early 1980s, physicians began exploring novel ways to open arteries and improve blood flow to save heart muscle before and during heart attacks. In the weeks before that fateful night, I had read an article in the New England Journal of Medicine about how researchers were able to inject clot busters into closed off coronary arteries. If this was done early enough during the heart attack, before complete damage had occurred, many hearts and lives could be saved.

During that early morning hour, I found a cardiologist who had just learned to do such a procedure, and I urgently sent him the patient by ambulance. The man with the dangerous chest pain was treated successfully. His pain went away, and he lived for several more years before finally dying of something other than heart disease.

It was the dawn of a new year, and, in caring for those with coronary artery disease, it was the dawn of a new age.
​

Watch On Call with the Prairie Doc® most Thursdays at 7 p.m. central on SDPTV and follow the Prairie Doc® on Facebook and YouTube for free and easy access to the entire Prairie Doc® library.

Comments are closed.

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

PRAIRIE DOC® MEDIA IS A PART OF HEALING WORDS FOUNDATION.

FIND SCIENCE-BASED PEDIATRIC MEDICAL INFORMATION ON OUR SISTER SITE. 
Healing Words Foundation logo
Play Eat Sleep logo
  • Home
  • About
  • People
  • Television
  • Podcasts
  • Perspective
  • Donate
  • Contact
  • Foundation
  • Book