HEALTHY
HEART
HEALTH NEWS AND INFORMATION
February 2014
A service of Kadlec Health System—Tri-Cities
First stop in heart emergency is critical
Here’s why it’s so important to
call 911
immediately, just like Kathy Frater did,
if you think you might be having a heart
attack.
A heart attack is the death of heart
muscle from the sudden blockage of a
coronary artery. This blockage deprives
the heart muscle of blood and oxygen.
If blood flow is not restored within
20 to 40 minutes, irreversible death
of the muscle begins to occur. Muscle
continues to die for up to eight hours.
Depending on how much heart muscle
is damaged, disability or death can
result.
This means that everyminute counts.
Time equals muscle.
Immediate
medical intervention — preferably
within the first hour of onset of
symptoms — is aimed at quickly
restoring blood flow to the heart muscle
to prevent or minimize this permanent
damage. Tragically, women typically
wait longer with serious symptoms
before seeking help — one reason that
women’s cardiac outcomes are more
deadly than men’s.
Right place.
With time making a
lifesaving difference, where you go for
care matters. Fortunately, Tri-City area
residents have excellent medical facilities
with advanced heart care capabilities at
A QUICK RESPONSE,
and getting
Tom Frater to the right hospital and
into surgery immediately, saved his life.
The Richland resident didn’t have
any of the typical markers for heart
disease. He wasn’t overweight; he
didn’t smoke or have diabetes; his
cholesterol wasn’t high nor did he
have high blood pressure; and he
had no known family history of
heart disease.
So last May when Tom was out
in the yard working, and suddenly
started to have tightness in his chest,
the idea of a heart attack came as a
surprise to him.
“I just didn’t feel right,” he said. “I
knew it wasn’t just being tired or a
heat stroke.”
Normally on Tuesday mornings,
Tom’s wife, Kathy, was away at a
meeting. That morning she stayed
home. Tom told her he didn’t feel
good and was going to lie down. She
offered to drive him to an urgent care
facility close by. While heading toward
the car, Tom felt light-headed and
couldn’t stand up. He lay down on the
garage floor while Kathy called 911.
Emergency responders arrived
within minutes and took Tom directly
to Kadlec, which had been notified
of his pending arrival and had teams
waiting for him all along the way —
first in the Emergency Department,
then in the Catheterization Lab, and
then immediately into surgery.
Tom doesn’t remember much of
what transpired the rest of that day.
“Really, the next thing I knew was I
had undergone open heart surgery —
a quadruple bypass,” he said.
While Tom was in surgery, one
of the emergency responders who
helped transport him to the hospital
tracked Kathy down at Kadlec. What
he said to her made a tremendous
impression.
“He said that if I hadn’t called 911
Timing is everything
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—Continued on page 2
Tom and Kathy Frater return to Kadlec’s
CardioPulmonary Rehabilitation where
after emergency heart surgery at
Kadlec, Tom completed a program to
help him recover.
