Vim & Vigor - Summer 2020 - CH - 51

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know I wouldn't be in on Monday.
After that, I don't remember anything until Sunday."

Quick Action Matters

Thiel found out later that she had
suffered a cardiac arrest in the
Emergency Department. Her care
team applied CPR and advanced
cardiovascular life support skills
to restart her heart. Her blood
pressure was very low and the right
ventricle in her heart had stopped
pumping blood into her lungs.
This is a potentially fatal condition
called cardiogenic shock that can
occur in patients who suffer a severe
heart attack.
The cardiology team administered IV medication to sustain
Thiel's blood pressure while cardiologist Kais Yehyawi, MD, quickly
decided on the best approach to
save her life. He and the team
performed a right-sided Impella®
procedure to allow Thiel's blood to
bypass her right ventricle, giving it
time to heal.
"The right Impella is basically a
pump that delivers between three
and four liters of blood per minute

to support the right side of the
heart," Yehyawi says. "When Kym
had the heart attack, part of the
heart muscle that had been receiving blood through the artery that
was blocked lacked oxygen. So, the
whole muscle became 'hibernated,'
or not moving. The right ventricle then just pools the blood; it's
no longer squeezing blood to the
lungs. That is why her blood pressure dropped."
Most heart attack patients come
in with damage to the left side of
the heart, so left-sided Impella
procedures are more common
and have been performed at
St. Mary Medical Center and sister
hospitals, St. Catherine Hospital and
Community Hospital, for several
years. However, Thiel's heart attack
impacted her right side, making
this the first right-side Impella procedure performed on a patient in
Northwest Indiana.
"Time is of the essence in allowing that heart muscle to recover,"
Yehyawi says. "Meanwhile, the
blood pressure has to be maintained. What we're trying to do is
buy time. Once we got the Impella

Start Here for
Heart Health

Checkups with a primary care physician are
important for safeguarding heart health.
To find a provider near you or for a referral
to the Advanced Heart & Vascular team at
Community Healthcare System, call
219-836-3477 or visit COMHS.org/heart.

in place, within an hour we saw her
blood pressure begin improving
and stabilizing."

A Positive Prognosis

Heart attack
survivor Kym
Thiel with
her cardiac
rehabilitation
team.

Thiel received two stents in the right
side of her heart, and her doctors
kept her on the Impella for four
days. She remembers nothing of
that time.
"I'm very thankful," Thiel says. "I
feel great. For you to tell me right
now that I had stents put in or I had
a heart attack, I'd tell you that you
were crazy."
Cardiologist Harish Shah, MD,
said that Thiel's prognosis is very
good, thanks to the Impella intervention. He credited the Emergency
Department team, the intensive
care unit team, his colleague Dr.
Yehyawi, the cardiac catheterization
lab team, and the other physicians
and medical professionals who
assisted with Thiel's comprehensive cardiac care for the positive outcome.
"The nurses and technologists
in the cath lab and the ICU were
very good, very efficient and very
knowledgeable," Shah says. "The
cardiac surgeon was standing by in
case we needed him, and we had
other physicians monitoring kidney
function and other things. We can
perform the procedure, but without
the entire team working together
and supporting us with this level of
expertise, we would not be able to
provide patients with this kind of
advanced care locally." *
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