By Shelly Whitehead
Special to KyForward
Jerry Sigl is a likable fellow with a quick, self-effacing sense of humor. And, at 72, he was living the good life after retiring from Cincinnati Bell, parsing his time between the golf course and his boat on Lake Cumberland.
But this past winter, he seemed to be feeling less energetic with each passing day. In fact, even his wife noticed a change.
“It was really a gradual thing where I just got less and less energy every year, I think,” he recalls from the living room of his Cold Spring home.
“For most of the last year, my wife would come in and say, ‘You’re always sitting in the chair watching TV and you don’t want to do anything anymore.’ I just didn’t have the energy.”
Then, in late February, he started feeling a vague jaw pain that progressively grew more intense and was sometimes accompanied by chest pressure. It finally grew so severe that his physician sent him to the Heart & Vascular Institute at St. Elizabeth Edgewood in Northern Kentucky, where physicians decided to perform a coronary angiogram to get a good view of what was going on in his heart’s blood vessels.
The minimally invasive procedure clearly displayed the problem. Sigl was suffering from acute coronary syndrome, or ACS, an emergency situation where the heart’s blood supply is compromised and can be suddenly blocked.
“Acute coronary syndrome is a situation where there is instability in the coronary arteries that puts people at risk for heart attack and death,” said Sigl’s physician, Dr. Mohan Brar, an interventional cardiologist at St. Elizabeth.
“In fact, you can really use the terms early heart attack and acute coronary syndrome interchangeably. In such cases, the plaque or cholesterol build-up in the coronary/ heart arteries has become unstable and that can make the blood stickier. … Cholesterol particles can then stick to the artery walls and can cause more progressive blockages.
“So you could say that someone coming in with acute coronary syndrome is in the early phases of a heart attack, and anything along a continuum – from stable angina to a full-blown heart attack … can occur.”
Know the signs, know your risks
ACS is a big problem in this country. In fact, Dr. Brar said research shows that the majority of patients suffering from coronary artery disease will experience the syndrome at some point. Risk factors for developing ACS include many of the health issues that Sigl said he experienced, including:
• Family history of heart disease
• Current or past smoker
• High cholesterol
• Lack of exercise
• Obesity
• Diabetes
• Increased age
Sigl was also pretty classic in his experience of symptoms associated with ACS, including growing fatigue, jaw pain and chest pressure. Some people may also experience gastrointestinal upset or pain shooting up the arm.
Treatment for ACS, like the syndrome itself, runs along a continuum. For those identified early in the progression of the syndrome, medication may be adequate. But in patients like Sigl, for whom the disease has progressed significantly, it’s often necessary for physicians to use a catheter to enter blocked blood vessels and insert small stents to keep these critical pathways open.
Sigl said doctors found one of his arteries was 99 percent blocked, so Dr. Brar placed two stents in the trouble blood vessel.
“I really didn’t feel a thing, but my chest did start hurting for a little while real bad,” Sigl said. “But then after that the pain went away and I’ve been fine ever since. They said they put two stents in one artery …and I felt great after that.”
Dr. Brar said Sigl is a lucky man because studies indicate that 30 to 40 percent of ACS patients never manage to make it to the hospital for the life-saving treatment he received. Others fail to recognize their symptoms and obtain timely help to adequately preserve heart muscle function and their future quality of life.
“That’s why early recognition of the signs of early heart attack is very important so these patients can be quickly evaluated and life-saving treatments can be instituted,” Dr. Brar said.
“If they show a full-blown heart attack happening, our intervention team will be called and they will most likely go into an emergent angiogram to open up the blocked arteries.
“This is why we need to educate our community about early recognition of the signs … because the earlier people get to the hospital, the more rapidly we can diagnose and treat the situation. You have to understand that time is muscle. Any delay in seeking medical attention can permanently damage more heart muscle, which can have a long-term impact on survival and everything else.”
Fortunately, Jerry Sigl’s got both his arteries and his heart muscle back in full working order and that has made all the difference. Today, he’s a big advocate for taking a baby aspirin every day, which he has done for years, and he says doctors told him that might have saved his life.
But Sigl also urges everyone to find out where you stand on your heart health. If you have any of the aforementioned symptoms or risk factors, see your doctor as soon as possible. What you find out may decide the course of the rest of your life.
“I feel like a different person now. I really do. I have way more energy and I just feel like my old self. I mean I am retired, so I don’t want to do too much,” he jokes, “But I’m involved with a lot more things now. … I was amazed really that I just instantly started feeling better – it was like magic.
“And I really thought I was in pretty good health. I went to the doctor every year and never thought anything would happen. I just thought I was above all this. But, none of us is above this.”
Shelly Whitehead is communications specialist for St. Elizabeth Healthcare.