Here are some Cardiac Patient Stories from the Saint Barnabas
Health Care System.
At age 16, Ryan of Monroe Township felt
like most young men his age -- invincible. He was learning
to drive, captain of his soccer team, meeting the stiff academic
challenges in his junior year, and dividing his spare time
between family and a girlfriend. What Ryan and his parents
did not know was that congenital heart disease was doing
permanent damage to his heart.
Late last year, when Ryan started to experience symptoms
of heart disease, he did not take much notice. “One
day he complained of chest pain after a soccer game,” recalled
his mother. “We thought it was because of all that
running on a cold November day.” Ryan never even mentioned
the heart palpitations to his parents. In December, a chest
x-ray taken during a bout of bronchitis revealed Ryan’s
enlarged heart. He was immediately transferred to Newark
Beth Israel Medical Center’s Heart Failure Treatment
and Transplant Program but doctors could not reverse Ryan’s
quick decent into heart failure.
On New Year’s Eve, as Marc Roelke, MD, Director of
Electrophysiology at Newark Beth Israel, was implanting a
battery-powered defibrillator in Ryan’s chest that
would jolt his heart back into action if it failed, his heart
stopped completely. Acting quickly, the surgical team, led
by Lawrence McBride, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon and Surgical
Director of the Lung Transplant Program at Newark Beth Israel,
placed Ryan on a biventricular assist device that would prolonged
his life while he waited for a heart transplant.
Unlike the revolutionary small ventricular assist devices
that can be implanted in the chest for months or years, the
biventricular device that Ryan needed was a large, external
pump that limited his mobility. “His extreme condition
called for a device that we could get in quickly,” explained
Mark J. Zucker, MD, JD, Director of the Heart Failure Treatment
and Transplant Program. “It is designed to be strictly
an intermediate support until a heart transplant can be performed.”
“Ryan had noncompaction cardiomyopathy, a congenital
malformation of the heart muscle,” said Dr. Zucker. “There
was no doubt that his heart was not going to improve and
he needed a transplant.”
Family and friends did their best to boost Ryan’s
spirits but his mother remembers how difficult those weeks
were. “One long day stretched into another,” she
said. The tubes linking Ryan’s heart to the pump were
threaded between his ribs and were a constant source of pain.
“Waiting was the hardest part,” remembers Ryan. “I
went from playing soccer everyday to needing help to sit
up in bed. I started to believe a transplant was not going
to happen for me.”
Just when his mother thought Ryan had really given up, David
Baran, MD, Director of Heart Failure and Transplant Research,
came into his room with the goods news the family was desperate
for. “Ryan asked Dr. Baran if he could hug him,” said
his mother.
Plans for the transplant were set in motion as Ryan’s
family and friends gathered to help pass the hours that ticked
by slowly as severe weather caused delays. Joanne Starr,
MD, Surgical Director of the Children’s Heart Center,
performed the transplant the following day- 27 days after
Ryan’s own heart had stopped.
Ryan’s steady recovery continues. He returned to school
and expects to be back on the soccer field with his teammates
in the fall.
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