Here are some Cardiac Patient Stories from the Saint Barnabas Health
Care System.
HEART TRANSPLANT PUTS YOUNG NJ ATHLETE
BACK IN
THE GAME
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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