Groundbreaking Therapy Saves Patient With Pulmonary Embolism

Treatment in Time

It was a brisk December afternoon in downtown Fairfax. Roger Eddy was walking to the bank to make a deposit when suddenly he felt dizzy, started to see myriad small bronze-colored stars and then collapsed on the sidewalk.

“I was going up an incline and I noticed that I seemed to be working harder to go up that incline than usual,” remembers the 69-year-old law office administrator.

When Eddy regained consciousness, he lay on the pavement gasping for air. Fortunately, an alert and caring bystander recognized the urgency of the situation and asked someone nearby to call 911. Within minutes of Eddy’s fall, emergency technicians from Fair Oaks (who happened to be in the heart of the City of Fairfax at the time) boarded him into an ambulance and rushed him to Inova Fairfax Hospital’s Emergency Department. The diagnosis was a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.

Direct Delivery

After numerous tests, a team of physicians at Inova Fairfax Hospital, led by David Spinosa, MD, an interventional radiologist and Medical Director of the Vascular Program at Inova Heart and Vascular Institute, worked to dissolve the clots that blocked the pulmonary arteries in both of Eddy’s lungs. The expert team was also composed of emergency medicine physician Neal Shelley, MD, critical care physician Soleyah Groves, MD, and pulmonologist Adlah Sukkar, MD. They deployed a groundbreaking treatment called ultrasonic mechanical thrombolysis to melt the clots.

Guided by advanced X-ray imaging, the team threaded two catheters through a vein in Eddy’s neck to his heart, then into the pulmonary arteries. Over a period of 12 hours, it delivered low doses of the clot-busting medicine tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). Special catheters using ultrasonic vibration pushed the tPA into the clot to help dissolve it faster.

Dissolving Clots

“We used this system because it allows a lower dose of the blood-thinning agent to work faster,” says Dr. Spinosa. “We thought if we could dissolve the blood clots over the next 12 hours, in the short term we could lower his risk of a life-threatening cardiac event, and in the long-term help him have better lung function and return him back to normal life.”

The results were what they had desired. After just one week of convalescence following his discharge from the hospital, Eddy returned to work and is now more active than ever. In fact, he has returned to his occasional bowling outings with his son, Josh, who graduates from Virginia Tech this May. Says Eddy, “We’ve never bowled a perfect game, but we make a perfect team.”

FIND OUT MORE

Learn more about pulmonary embolism at www.inovaheart.org.

Available Round the Clock

Pulmonary embolism is a complex disease. To ensure the best possible outcome for every patient, physicians at Inova Fairfax Hospital have developed a team of specialists from multiple disciplines who are expertly trained to evaluate and treat this life-threatening illness. Inova Pulmonary Embolism Response Team (IPERT) provides the most advanced diagnostic and treatment techniques to help each patient achieve his or her best outcome.

“Our team of emergency physicians, pulmonologists, intensive care specialists, cardiologists and vascular/interventional radiologists are innovators who have dedicated themselves to work together to break down traditional barriers to rapid care,” says Alain Drooz, MD, an IPERT team member and attending physician in the Division of Vascular and Interventional Radiology at Inova Fairfax Hospital.