By Natalie Allison Janicello / Times-News
During a trip to the hospital for double pneumonia in 2006, Tonya Moore’s life was dramatically changed.
While on a ventilator, doctors discovered Moore had a heart attack at some point that year — she never knew when — and it was too late to insert stents or conduct bypass surgery. After being diagnosed with congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy, a weakening of the heart muscle, Moore is left to wait until she can receive a heart transplant.
But in the meantime, she’s getting help from a ventricular assist device — a mechanical pump — that will keep blood flowing to her heart as it should. The surgery, which was conducted May 29, was the first of its kind at Greensboro’s Moses Cone Memorial Hospital and makes the facility the first non-transplant hospital in North Carolina to provide the procedure.
“I was getting progressively worse,” said Moore, 44, of her heart condition and associated symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath.
She and her family managed to fit in another cruise in early April before her scheduled surgery for the heart pump, which was originally going to be performed at Duke University Medical Center. Before the surgery, Moore got a call from her surgeon at Moses Cone, Dr. Peter Van Trigt, who said after conferring with her cardiologist and a surgeon at Duke, there was a possibility the procedure could be performed in Greensboro.
“I’m more comfortable at Cone and I know more people there,” she said.
Moore was told she would have to stay at Moses Cone for about 25 days after the May 29 surgery, but ended up recovering much faster and leaving June 12.
Now, she’ s adjusting to life with a heart pump, wearing battery packs on her side during the day and connecting directly to a power source at night when she sleeps. But once Moore fully recovers from the surgery and adapts to life with a heart pump, she’ll be able to live a fairly normal life.
“I should be able to do anything I want to do, with the exception of swimming and roller coasters,” she said.
While she’s wearing the battery packs and equipment for the heart pump, Moore can’t submerge her chest in water. Dr. Van Trigt said patients who wear the assist devices have to wear a special wrap over their side and put the battery in a waterproof satchel.
“I have three people put me to bed every night,” Moore said, joking about how her husband, Neil; 22-year-old daughter, Beverly; and 17-year-old son, Chris, have had to tend to her much more now that she wears the heart pump equipment.
Van Trigt, who also helped start the transplant program at Duke, said he first inserted a heart pump in a patient about nine years ago. The devices, developed by Thoratec, are supposed to last for 10 years.
There are two types of patients who receive the heart pumps, he said. The first — bridge-to-transplant patients — are those on the waiting list for a new heart, while other patients receive them as a form of destination therapy, when they are too old to qualify for a transplant or have some type of medical problem prohibiting them from receiving one.
Moore received the heart pump as a bridge to her future transplant, however her doctors have told her she has a 15-percent chance of ever finding a match. She said her chances are low because there is a high level of antibodies in her blood, causing issues with her immune system.
“It’s a pretty low percentage, but it’s a 15-percent chance they can,” Neil said. “That’s the way we have to look at it.”
Until she finds a match, Moore plans to continue getting back to enjoying life and her favorite hobbies, including making stained glass, which she’s done for about 15 years.
“I’m ready to get back out there and do the things I really liked to do before,” she said. “I might even get back into my roller skates.”
– http://www.thetimesnews.com/news/top-news/pump-buys-time-on-heart-transplant-list-1.163242
Kevin Coy, MD 