Help for Heart Attack Victims Closer to Home

Heart attack patients in western St. Charles, Lincoln and Warren counties now have life-saving treatments a little closer to home. The SSM Heart Institute at has begun providing emergency angioplasty and stent placement procedures 24 hours a day, seven days a week at its Lake Saint Louis facility. 

When an individual is having a heart attack, he or she is taken to the nearest facility with the ability to open blocked arteries. Dr. Elie Azrak, medical director of the SSM St. Joseph Hospital West Cardiac Catheterization Lab said arteries supply blood to the heart muscle, and since heart muscles do not regenerate, the lack of blood causes the heart muscle to gradually die away. The availability of emergency angioplasty and stent placement procedures decreases a patient’s travel time during an acute heart attack which saves valuable time as well as the heart muscle, Azrak said.

“This is why timely treatment is of the essence,” Azrak said. “With the option of the emergent cardiac catheterization capacity, we are providing the community with the timeliness that otherwise would not be available.”

Following a heart attack, the heart muscle is weakened and damaged.  And although medications and exercise can help, Azrak said they only train the heart to deal with its own weakness. The part of the heart muscle that is permanently damaged does not recover.

“Medications and exercise allow us to train the heart to be better at pumping with whatever strength is left in it — to be a more efficient pump,” he said.  But these things do not repair the damaged heart muscle. 

Azrak said it’s hard to say how many lives will be saved by the new emergent services at SSM St. Joseph Hospital West. “It’s hard to quantify by numbers, but we do know that the more timely the treatment is, the higher the number of individuals saved. And the more timely the treatment, the higher the number who survive with much better long term outcomes.”

Educating the public on when to seek help for a possible heart attack also saves lives, Azrak said.  Symptoms of an acute heart attack are chest discomfort, neck discomfort, arm discomfort, sweating, shortness of breath and sickness to the stomach.

Non-specific symptoms include numbness and tingling in the arms, stomach pain and back pain especially between the shoulders.

Though some of these symptoms seem common without the presence of a heart attack, Azrak said sufferers should consider whether the symptoms appear to be out of the ordinary for the activity the person is engaged in or if symptoms are unusual for them.

“The central point here is that the capability for timely treatment is now local. A state-of-the-art facility is providing treatment and that is great news for the community,” Azrak said. The cardiac cath lab at SSM St. Joseph Hospital West now has the capability of opening any of the arteries in the body including blocked leg arteries. In addition, clots can be treated as can cholesterol blockages. “This is really a great win for the local community,” he said.