Angioplasty and stents saved this Indianapolis man's life

By Dennis Thompson
HealthDay Reporter

(HealthDay News) -- Rick Burkert, 63, of Indianapolis , had his heart attack on April 4, 1997.

"I'd just finished lunch and went out to do some yard work," Burkert recalled. "Unfortunately, I lit up a cigarette and started trimming some bushes, and it hit me like a truck."

He felt unbelievable pressure on his chest. He was sweating like someone had poured a bucket of water on his head. His left arm hurt terribly.

He was home alone, as his wife was on a trip to Florida . Burkert called his mother and told her what was going on.

"She said, 'You're having a heart attack,' and I said, 'No, I'm not,' " Burkert remembered. He said he'd just lie down. She said she would call 911.

Burkert heard the sirens approaching as he sat in his living room. On the way to the hospital, paramedics began using baby aspirin and nitroglycerin to try and stop the heart attack, but neither worked.

The paramedics took him to a hospital not set up for the artery-clearing procedure called angioplasty, and the heart attack wouldn't stop. He was there 10 minutes before they sent him to another hospital 15 miles away.

"And I'm having a heart attack the whole time, because they can't stop it," Burkert said. "It took 15 to 20 minutes, and that's with lights blazing and the whole works."

The second hospital was ready for Burkert, having been notified of his life-threatening predicament. The angioplasty theater was ready, and he was rushed into surgery.

Burkert was awake for the operation, but the drugs they pumped into him ensured that he didn't feel a thing. "I knew they were working on me, but I couldn't feel anything," he said.

The surgeons inserted two bare-metal stents into his blood vessels, latticework tubes that keep open arteries that have been cleared using angioplasty.

About two weeks later, Burkert experienced some discomfort and went back to the hospital. Doctors performed a second angioplasty and inserted a third stent.

Burkert is convinced that without the medical technology used to treat him, he would have died from his heart attack.

"The heart attack I had used to be called the Widowmaker, because once you had it, there was nothing they could do," he said. "But that was before angioplasty and stents, so I guess I feel kind of lucky."

He hasn't had a bit of trouble since. He takes cholesterol-lowering medication and has some nitroglycerin on hand for chest pains, but that's about it. The cigarette in his mouth when his heart attack struck was the last one he smoked.

Burkert has been concerned about the stents reclosing, especially now that they're a decade old. His doctor has told him not to worry, since there's been no sign of trouble.

He has researched drug-coated stents as possible replacements for his current bare-metal ones, should it come to that. But he's not sure he'd want them, given that they can cause blood clots if you don't take the proper medication.

"I'm not so sure they're any better than what I have," Burkert said. "We'd have to sit and talk. My heart doctor's very good. He'll answer any question you throw at him."

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