Samarirtan doctors, labs catch and treat heart attack as it happens

Samarirtan doctors, labs catch and treat heart attack as it happens

On Monday, July 29, Loudonville resident and University Hospitals Samaritan Medical Center employee Catherine White came to the hospital with chest and back pain − she had never experienced anything like this.

In the Emergency Department, rapid use of EKG testing showed no heart stress, but blood work hinted at heart-muscle damage. As part of an exam by physician assistant Katie Manocchio, PA-C, a CAT scan was performed to check for internal bleeding. Thankfully, no such bleeding was found.

Immediately following the scan, a second EKG test proved White was having a heart attack.

“We caught this event while it developed; plaque was blocking blood flow in a coronary artery,” Manocchio said.

Images of Catherine White’s emergency heart procedure show an obstructed circumflex artery, top right. marked by a dashed ellipse before ballooning. After stenting, the dashed ellipse shows return of blood flow, top left. A view of the stented artery indicates the revived circumflex artery, bottom left. Catheter-based ultrasound imaging confirmed expansion and alignment of the stent, bottom right.

ST-elevation myocardial infarction, known by the acronym STEMI, is the name given to heart attacks caught on EKG. Throughout the hospital, the STEMI ALERT page sounded overhead signaling the Emergency Department had a patient needing assistance. In response, the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory mobilized.

“The sooner we can intervene the greater the odds are for saving the heart’s pumping efficiency − time is muscle,” said interventional cardiologist Dr. Luis Dallan, M.D., medical director of UH Harrington Heart & Vascular Institute at Samaritan. “It took only 32 minutes from the EKG indicating STEMI to the first balloon deployed to prep the artery for a stent.”

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