A pulmonary embolism can kill you swiftly, which is why it’s important to get it treated as soon as possible. That’s why Memorial Health’s PERT Team is offering quick, local treatment, which can be life-saving for patients who can’t afford to travel for treatment.
The heart and lungs work together to oxygenate blood and deliver it to the rest of the body, but a sudden blockage in an artery can cause that process to fail.
Interventional cardiologist at Memorial Health’s Heart and Vascular Center, Dr. Jagjit “Jags” Khosla, describes how harmful a pulmonary embolism can be.
“It’s a term that’s used for people who have blood clots in their lungs,” he said. “Imagine it like having a big highway where things are running pretty smoothly and then suddenly there’s a roadblock and that leads to all the congestion, all the traffic jam. And so, it’s kind of like that when the heart gets the blood into the lungs for oxygenation, if you have a lot of clots there, it has to push against it. And, if it happens all of a sudden, it can even lead to failure of the heart to push the blood and the patient can collapse, the patient can die from this. So, it’s a pretty severe disease.”
A pulmonary embolism might present itself after a long period of inactivity, such as a long drive, flight, or time spent bedridden.
Khosla has some symptoms to look out for.
“For the clots in the lungs, usually it is chest pain, shortness of breath or patients sometimes coming in after passing out because the heart is having such a hard time pushing the blood through those clots,” Khosla said. “So, that can all lead the patient to suddenly collapse, and they come in with cardiac arrest as the first symptom.”
It can prove fatal in just a couple of minutes in the most severe cases, so time is everything.
That is why Memorial Health has a Pulmonary Embolism Response Team, or PERT team, to address and treat this issue.
“These patients are some of the sickest patients,” Khosla said. “They are almost, in terms of mortality, as sick as patients coming in with a major heart attack. So, these patients need immediate treatment, immediate response. A team mainly is comprised of the cardiologist who’s doing the procedures and who’s making decisions, but also entails people from the emergency department, from radiology, from the ICU team so that they all are on board and people things can be moved quickly so that the patient can get the appropriate treatment started in time.”
This team of medical professionals can treat locally, which means that people in southwest Oklahoma don’t have to be transferred to a facility several hours away.
This is especially important for patients in unstable conditions as Memorial Health offers options for quick treatment.
“We can put in a catheter, it’s kind of like a small tube that goes from the groin into the lung, and we can break that clot and get some of those clots out to help blood flow improve and also let the blood thinner work better in those areas,” Khosla said. “So this is one of those technologies called thrombectomy. Otherwise you can also put in catheters into those clots and give clot-buster medication at much lower and much safer doses.”
The recovery is quick, too.
“Usually, patients might have to stay overnight in the ICU, but usually by the next morning the patient is moved out of the ICU and ready to be discharged within 24 hours,” Khosla said.
It’s Heart Month, so show your heart a little extra care.
Khosla says to not ignore any symptoms related to your heart’s health. That includes chest pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, fatigue, or a general sense of feeling unwell.
Check it out; your heart will thank you.
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