He Received a Life-Saving Stent

Opening arteries with tiny metal ‘scaffolds’ is a safe way to treat and prevent heart attacks

He’s up and running again - Carbon County residents like Ron Butz who come to Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital, Lehighton, now have access to “gold standard” heart attack care—an angioplasty and stent within 90 minutes of coming to the emergency room—through a collaborative program with Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network.

When Ronald Butz of Lehighton came to his local emergency room with a heart attack, the doctors there knew what to do. “You need to open the blocked artery as quickly as possible to prevent death or permanent damage to the heart,” says Frank Penater, M.D., emergency physician at Gnaden Huetten Memorial Hospital. Penater and his team transferred Butz to Lehigh Valley Hospital, where cardiologist Raymond Durkin, M.D., opened the artery with a balloon angioplasty and stent.

Butz enjoyed a full recovery. Today he’s among the millions of people with one or more arteries held open by stents—small, expandable wire mesh tubes. Used more often now than coronary bypass surgery, stents offer a faster and less painful recovery, says cardiologist John Mannisi, M.D., of Lehigh Valley Hospital and Health Network.

How stents work

First, cardiologists do a cardiac catheterization, a test in which a catheter (tiny hollow tube) is guided through a vein or artery into the heart. Dye is injected to reveal a moving image of blood flow to and from the heart.

“It gives us a blueprint of the arteries, including the severity of the blockage and the exact diameter of the artery we need to open,” Mannisi says. “This is important because stents come in different sizes and are fitted just as shoes are fitted. There is a size for everyone except those with naturally very small arteries.”

Cardiologists then guide a tiny balloon and stent through the catheter and into the artery. They inflate the balloon to open the artery, place the stent as a scaffold to hold the artery open, then remove the balloon. In the past, the patient might need a repeat procedure because scar tissue forming over the stent re-narrowed the artery. The drug-coated stents now in use prevent this in most cases, Mannisi says.

Today, stents also are used to prevent strokes in high-risk patients. They’re placed in the carotid arteries, the blood vessels on either side of the neck that carry blood to the face and brain.

This page last updated 9/15/09 03:57 PM