Chadbbad1

That is just what they say when they can’t fix it, they don’t have any other options, occluded vessels can’t be bypassed.Presumably you had a portion of your heart wall not getting blood, they weren’t able to open it, now that tissue will die. I imagine they kept you in the hospital for your infarct to end. your pumping function, known as your ejection fraction will take a hit. Normal is 60%, it is likely that it was reduced to 30 or 40%, if it’s below 20% it warrants an insertable defibrillator because you are much more likely to have an arrhythmia. Even if you did have a reduction in your EF, it is likely to bounce back, and the requirements are that you take medicines for three months I think, to see if it does come back before doctors are allowed to put in the ICD.

If the doctor wasn’t able to fix the blockage, it tells me the disease is very advanced, you may have highly calcified vessels which makes delivering a stent very hard. Or you have so many blockages that one stent won’t cut it, or it’s too complicated and might damage other vessels.

Dr sometime sugarcoat their findings. “Yeah you had a heart attack, but we weren’t able to get it open, we are going to put you on some meds, you will be fine.” But the reality is, you have heart disease, now maybe heart failure, more chances of arrhythmias that cause death, likely atherosclerotic disease in your carotids and brain that can cause stroke, and everywhere in your body that can give you problems. I am not a doctor but I have assisted in the same procedure you had over 8,000 times. I will tell you that even one cigarette can cause you to have another heart attack. Every time you smoke your vessels constrict, that’s what gives you that lightheaded feeling, or used to. This constriction can release plaque from your vessel wall, and cause a heart attack.

Next time you see your cardiologist, ask him what your EF is, ask him to write down any blockage you have over 20%, which vessel and where it is. One will be 100%. Ask him what other preventative tests we can do for finding atherosclerosis in other parts of my body. Good luck and take care of yourself.

As others have pointed out I don’t know anything about you, and this is purely speculation. There could be a spectrum of different scenarios. What it sounds like is that you had a type a heart attack that others describe as STEMI, because you quickly went from the ER to the Cath Lab.When our hospital has this it’s called overhead and one representative from every unit of the hospital comes to the Cath Lab, it is the most critical time sensitive patient in the hospital. Our goal is from the time that you enter the hospital to ballooning is no longer than 60 minutes, that is our door to balloon time. This is mostly driven by reimbursement. The hospital cannot be reimbursed if it takes longer than that. 95% of the STEMIS we do are very straightforward, it is really down to a science now, and one of the easiest procedures we do. New blockages are very soft and easy to open up, so for you to have a different outcome says a lot. ask the doctor what percent of STEMIS he does that goes unopened.

One of the harder procedures that is done in the Cath Lab, and is fairly new, is fixing CTO’s. Chronic total occlusion’s, which you have now. You could have a viability study, which is done with nuclear perfusion to see if any of the tissue is still viable, and if so, one of his more aggressive partners, or someone from another group, (which might be hard for him to recommend) can use some techniques to try to get the blockage open. This is really only necessary if you find that you are having chest pain on exertion.