I REFER TO AN ARTICLE on Page 3 of the MIDWEEK NATION of November 23 entitled: Life-saving plea from doc.
In that article Dr Dean Heller of the Baptist Hospital in Miami, Florida, United States, recommend that the Queen Elizabeth Hospital establish an angioplasty centre, to which every arrival patient suspected of suffering a heart attack would be directed.
Dr Heller went on to say that angioplasty has proved to be very successful in saving the lives of patients who had suffered heart attacks in the United States, and would probably be just as successful, here if not more so, as Barbados was a much smaller country, and getting treatment quickly was crucial.
I can attest to some of the advantages of angioplasty as outlined by Heller as follows: In September of 2012, I visited my stepdaughter in Rayne, Louisiana, and during the second week of my visit, her husband Randy suffered what appeared to be a heart attack (he thought it was gas in his stomach) on the Tuesday evening.
My stepdaughter thought differently and “ordered” him to get into the truck. She then drove him to the Jewish Hospital in Lafayette, Louisiana, which was a 40-minute drive away.
Two hours later she phoned to say that Randy had been assessed, or tested, on arrival and had been admitted to undergo a procedure first thing the next morning. She also advised that she was staying with him in the hospital for the duration.
The procedure mentioned above was the clearing of two blocked arteries (minor) to Randy’s heart by inflated balloons, followed by the insertion of a stent in each artery to keep them open.
In conclusion, the couple arrived back home in Rayne at 1 p.m. on the Thursday, about 40 hours after leaving for the hospital. Apart from a small dressing just about his left ankle, there was nothing in Randy’s appearance to suggest that he had undergone any procedure surgical or otherwise, and, to this day he has had no further problems with his heart.
– CECIL L. FIELDS