A heart attack can kill you, but some doctors are causing the event as part of their treatment. It allows them to use a minimally invasive procedure to fix a damaged heart.
After one year of recovery from a controlled heart attack, 67-year-old Bobby Bridges can do just about everything again, yard work, work as a police chaplain and preaching in church.
He said, “My heart stopped. Evidently I rolled at about five miles an hour through two intersections, and then hit the curb and the jolt of hitting the curb brought me back to life, literally.”
Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a genetic disorder, was causing a thickness in the heart wall that was obstructing blood flow. The cardiologist performed an alcohol ablation, causing a controlled heart attack to kill part of the heart and reduce the obstruction.
“Oh yeah, when they induced that heart attack, heart attack hurts, I can tell you,” Bobby said.
Immediately, with the obstruction gone, the blood flowed normally, and Bridges returned to normal life, even preaching again. His recovery was faster than if he chose a surgical route.
Stuart Lander, M.D., an interventional cardiologist at Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas, Texas, said, “In appropriate patients, that are appropriately screened, it can be life changing as it was for Bobby.”
Bobby said, “I’m completely a new person. If there is any way to describe how I am today, I’m 30 years younger.”
Hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy is a genetic disorder that often goes undetected until the patient has a massive heart attack, so Bridges was indeed a lucky man.
