Alive again: Tomball man survives deadly arrhythmia

Ventricular fibrillation is fatal unless it’s immediately corrected. It occurs when the heart muscle shakes and quivers, instead of beating regularly to pump blood to the rest of the body. If not shocked back into rhythm within minutes, "Vfib," as it is called, is 100 percent fatal.

Eighty-one-year-old John P. is alive today because his heart went into Vfib at the Emergency Room at St. Luke's Health-The Vintage Hospital.

John had no prior history of heart trouble when it suddenly felt like "a horse was standing on my chest." He and his wife live 5 minutes from the hospital and the ER staff was ready to treat his heart attack. Minutes after arriving, John’s heart went into Vfib, then stopped beating.

The ER team called a Code Blue, and the entire staff worked to administer lifesaving measures, including CPR and defibrillation.

It worked.

Next, Interventional Cardiologist Gautam Patankar, MD, FACC, used a minimally invasive procedure to clear the blockages that caused John’s heart attack. Using a small catheter inserted in the groin, Dr. Patankar implanted two small, expandable wire-mesh stents to restore blood flow to his heart  The procedure took less than 30 minutes and left no visible scar.

"Time is tissue, so we want to get those arteries pumping blood again as soon as we can,” said Curtis Townsend, Emergency Room Director at St. Luke's-The Vintage. “VFib has a 50-70% survival rate if witnessed or observed by someone able to help. If unwitnessed for greater than 10 minutes, it has less than a 10% survival rate. John was in the right place.”

Two months later, John is seeing a cardiologist and doing cardiac rehabilitation exercises. “I'm doing very well,” he said. “My heart is strong and I can do just about anything I want except when I'm working out, I shouldn't [overexert].”

How did it feel to survive a flatline?

"In a kind of subconscious way, it felt like I was someplace warm. There was no pain. No worries about anything. No anxiety. It was like I was looking into a kind of gray cloud,” John recalled.

“It's given me the desire to know exactly why God brought me back and if I should be doing something other than what I am doing. I think it’s taught me to be a little less arrogant, a little more humble.”

John recently returned to the Vintage ER, healthy and happy.  He brought cards to the entire ER staff expressing his gratitude and personally thanked everyone.