It’s a condition that can literally take your breath away — causing almost a million people a year to have difficulty doing simple tasks like walking and even working. Left untreated, it can lead to a life-threatening condition. An innovative procedure is helping those people get their lives back.
Fun, fast and full-contact -- that’s what Jessica Lopez loves about flat-track roller derby! But a few years ago, she had to hang up her skates.
“I had coughed all over the sink and there was just a lot of blood,” Lopez painfully recalled.
She made her way to Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
“We were able to make the diagnosis that one side of her one lung, on the right side, was completely filled with clot, no blood flow was going through one side, and that led us to the diagnosis of CTEPH,” explained Dr. Chris Malaisrie, a cardiac surgeon at Northwestern Medicine.
Lopez needed an immediate, life-saving surgery called PTE. The 10-hour procedure involved opening the chest and attaching Jessica to a heart-lung bypass machine.
“We are able to take a look inside the pulmonary artery, turn the circulation off so there’s no blood flooding in the field, and then, in meticulous fashion, slowly peel that clot away from the pulmonary artery,” Malaisrie said.
Almost immediately, Lopez could breathe better, and she believes what she learned on the track is why she is here today.
“It completely changed me as a woman,” Lopez said. “To not just be able to be more active, but to be more mentally strong, not just physically strong. And I’d never had that in my life.”
Treatments for CTEPH include blood thinners, balloon angioplasty and open-heart surgery. People as young as teenagers to 80 can be good candidates for PTE surgery.