What Our Cardiac Patients Say

So often our patients tell us that they are pleased with our excellent services through letters and stories. We would like to share some of those letters and stories with you.

The following are letters from real patients and employees celebrating the excellent care given or experienced at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. Letters span the years between 2000 and present. All patient names and dates have been removed to protect patient confidentiality, unless authorization was given by the individual.

• Kudos to Our Medical Center
• Kudos to Our Cath Lab
• Kudos to Our Cardiac Surgery Services
• Kudos to Our Alta Bates Campus ED
• The Story of Mr. Guillory and Mr. Mui - From Heart Attack to Health

Kudos Letters from Cardiac Patients

Kudos to Our Medical Center

This note was sent by a gentleman who's mother had just had heart surgery. He pointed out that his brother's son and his son's wife are nurses in Chico and that their entire family has complimented the service his mother received. He said, "I don't know what you've done here, but the service is excellent and I wanted to pass that on."

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Kudos to Our Cath Lab

This letter of appreciation was sent by a satisfied family member, who's loved one was admitted to the Cardiac Cath Lab.

"It is impossible to express our deep appreciation for the care we received from Neese McGraw, RN [Pre and Post Surgery] in the Cardiac Cath Lab. Her concern and compassion were genuine and heart-felt. We knew we were in very capable hands. While this could have been a trying experience, Neese made sure the entire family was comfortable and well cared for. We would like to thank her for her kindness."

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Kudos to Our Cardiac Surgery Services

The following letter was sent by one of our grateful cardiovascular patients.

"One of the items on my to-do list has been to write a letter to express my thanks for the care I was given during my surgery and post surgery. Dr. Robert Stallone did a great job. He treated me very well and gave me the confidence that he would be successful.

"While I was pleased with all of the staff that gave me care during my three days in the hospital, I would like to single out Rebecca Reed, RN. She gave me excellent care and made me feel that she was paying attention to my needs. I definitely felt that she was managing my post surgery recovery. I won't forget the sense I had that she was looking out for me from encouraging me to get out of bed and exercise to her attention to my pain medicine and getting me off of it. She is a gifted professional. I only regret that I took this long to express my gratitude."

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Kudos to Our Alta Bates Campus ED

This letter was sent by a prior patient to the Director of the Alta Bates Campus Emergency Department.

"I want to take this opportunity to recognize and commend one of your nursing staff at the Alta Bates Emergency Department. I am not a person that normally goes out of my way to recognize someone who does their job. However, in this case I think the recognition and commendation is for professional expertise at the highest level of nursing.

I arrived at the Alta Bates Campus Emergency Department... with pain in my chest. I was treated seriously and professionally by the ER nurse. While in her care, I had a major heart attack. I am unable to tell you what steps were taken to save my life, but they were initiated by this nurse and they were successful. I was revived, stabilized and ultimately went to the (Cardiac) Cath Lab for an angioplasty. I am certain that without this professional treatment, my story would not have had a happy ending.

If you have an employee recognition program, please nominate this nurse on my behalf for exemplary conduct at the hightest professional level.

Thank you for quality health care throughout my stay at your hospital."

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Patient Stories

The Story of Mr. Guillory and Mr. Mui - From Heart Attack to Health

The following story was first published in the Alta Bates Summit Community Connection Newsletter. It describes the journey of two men, from heart attack to health.

Julius Guillory and Roger Mui are lucky to be alive. Both men were caught off guard by serious heart attacks, and both their lives were saved by skilled clinicians at Alta Bates Summit Medical Center. Mr. Guillory and Mr. Mui's stories illustrate why the East Bay's largest heart program - which treats approximately 4,000 patients a year - offers exceptional care.

On a Sunday late last July, Mr. Guillory, a 44-year-ol construction foreman, was unwinding at a ranch in Fremont with his quarterhorse, Casey. After his ride, Mr. Guillory felt pain in his neck and back. "Driving home, my vision got disoriented and the pain moved into my chest, stomach, and left arm," recalls Mr. Guillory.

When he arrived home, his wife, Gertrude, recognized his symptoms and rushed him to the Summit Campus Emergency Department.

An EKG showed that Mr. Guillory was experiencing a major heart attack. "He quickly became unstable, with a lot of rapid heartbeats, and his blood pressure was dropping," explains Eric Johnson, MD, the interventional cardiologist who began treating him. At one point, Dr. Johnson shocked him five times with defibrillators. Mr. Guillory, who was semiconscious during the shocks, says it felt "like a horse was kicking me in the chest."

Once Mr. Guillory became more stable, doctors kept his heart beating with a temporary pacemaker and rushed him to the cardiac catheterization lab to determine the condition of his coronary arteries. In the diagnosis test, technicians thread a catheter through blood vessels, guided by X-ray images. The catheter injects a special dye into the heart. The dye is detected through X-ray images, highlighting the structure and condition of the coronary arteries. In Mr. Guillory's case, physicians discovered that his right coronary artery was completely blocked.

The next step was to open the artery with direct angioplasty. Dr. Johnson guided a cardiac catheter with a deflated balloon at the tip through the artery to the blockage. Then, by inflating the balloon, he reopened the artery. He placed a metal stent inside the arttery to keep it from reclosing. "This is effective and safe," says Dr. Johnson. "A lot of studies suggest that direct angioplasty is the best treatment for heart attacks."

"The staff saved my life," says Mr. Guillory. "I was treated well throughout my hospital stay." Julius Guillory's life was saved by an experienced cardiac team with access to resources small hospitals often cannot provide. Dr. Johnson notes that "one of the great things is that we have a cath lab on site, open 24 hours a day with staff on call at all times." In 2005, Alta Bates Summit's cath labs performed more procedures than any other East Bay hospital, averaging over 4,500 procedures each year.

Alta Bates Summit can offer appropriate diagnostic tests and treatments for some of the most unique and complex conditions. It is this sort of specialized care that saved Roger Mui, a 70-year-old retired custodian in the Oakland school district. The entire week before Christmas, Mr. Mui had been suffering mild chest pain and shortness of breath. When he visited his family doctor, the physician immediately recommended he go to the Alta Bates Campus Emergency Department.

A cardiac catheterization revealed that one of Mr. Mui's coronary arteries was completely blocked, another 60 percent blocked, and a third 95 percent blocked. Coyness Ennix, MD, decided that a procedure such as angioplasty - the one that saved Julius Guillory - would not work for Mr. Mui because his blockage was too extensive. He would need triple coronary-bypass surgery. During this procedure, surgeons connect a segment of vein (usually from the patient's leg) to the coronary artery before and after the blockage to reroute blood flow, which effectively "bypasses" the blockage.

Mr. Mui, however, was a risky candidate for this surgery because of his age. During bypass surgery, the heart stops beating, and a cardiopulmonary bypass machine takes over for the heart and lungs. A small percentage of patients, particularly elderly patients, suffer serious complications from the machine.

Dr. Ennix's solution was to perform "beating heart" surgery, a relatively new procedure that doesn't use the bypass machine, allowing the heart to beat during surgery. Surgeons clamp a stablilizing device onto either side of the coronary artery, and use a gentle vacuum suction to render that area of the heart motionless while the rest of the heart beats. Only when the area is motionless can surgeons perform the bypass.

"Nationally, beating-heart surgery only makes up 20 percent of all bypass surgeries," says Dr. Ennix. "But in our practice, we do it probably 75 to 80 percent of the time, because we're so comfortable doing it. We've had a lot of success."

Mr. Mui's surgery was also a success, and Dr. Ennix says that it unquestionably saved his life. Mr. Mui sums up his gratitude simply: "I'm very happy to be alive."

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