February 13, 2012
Heeding Your Heart's Health Wake-Up Call
By Lee-Ann Landis
Living a healthy lifestyle is not easy.
Just ask John Magri of South Jersey. At the age of 46, Magri had a heart attack. He was treated with a stent and his doctors told him he needed to make some significant changes to avoid a second potentially deadly heart attack.
Magri needed to eat a healthy diet, get off the couch and start exercising, lose weight, and he needed to quit smoking. Moreover, he had to take an aspirin and blood thinner daily to prevent the formation of a blood clot related to the stent used to reopen the blocked artery that caused his first heart attack.
“I thought that I was fixed after the first one,” says Magri. “The doctors fixed what was wrong with me and I figured I could simply resume my life.”
In January, a mere 18 months after his first heart attack, Magri had a second. This time Magri was taken to Jefferson University Hospitals. He was in cardiac arrest.
He was quickly sent to the cardiac catheterization lab at Jefferson where David L. Fischman, MD, restored blood flow limiting damage to Magri’s heart.
“We got John into the cardiac catheterization lab less than 20 minutes after his second heart attack, found the blockage and inserted a stent to reopen blood flow to his heart,” says Dr. Fischman. “When we decrease what’s known as door-to-balloon-time – the amount of time it takes from when the patient walks in the door to when we get them in the lab – we dramatically increase the patient’s chance of survival.”
But it should never have come to that.
“A blood clot had formed in his right artery as a result of John’s reluctance to take the blood thinners he was prescribed after his first heart attack and stent placement,” says Dr. Fischman, co-director or the Cardiac Catheterization Lab at Jefferson.
It is critical for people with known coronary artery disease – often called heart disease – like John Magri to recognize that balloon angioplasty and stents or coronary artery bypass surgery treat the immediate problems of blocked blood vessels in the heart, but do not cure the underlying disease.
That’s why it is critical for heart patients to quit smoking, get active, eat healthy diets, and take the medications as prescribed by their doctors, Dr. Fischman says.
Magri is heeding his second wake-up call.
He’s quit smoking, he’s lost 17 pounds, and he is making a serious effort to choose the treadmill over cheesesteaks. Moreover, he’s taking his Plavix and aspirin every day.
“I know this might be my last chance,” he says. “I was lucky to land at Jefferson, where they had the experience and expertise to know that stenting was my best option for restoring blood flow quickly and safely and getting me back on my feet.”
Now he wants to share his story to help others avoid his mistakes, and the potentially devastating consequences that may result.
This week Dr. Fischman and some of colleagues from Jefferson’s Cardiac Cath Lab will participate in an online Ask the Experts about Interventional Cardiology forum. This is an opportunity for you to submit questions about the diagnosis and treatment of heart problems and have them answered by some of Jefferson’s pioneering interventional cardiologists: www.JeffersonHospital.org/AskTheExperts/CardiacCath.