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When Sandeep Sangha started having chest pain while he was running, he chalked it up to a lack of exercise over the winter months.
But the pain and shortness of breath persisted and, despite having no family history of heart disease, he began to worry. He went to see his family doctor who referred him to a cardiologist. Then came a stress test, an angiogram – and a shocking discovery.
One of the arteries supplying blood to Sandeep's heart was 100 per cent blocked.
On January 31, the Brampton truck driver underwent a Chronic Total Occlusion Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (CTO PCI) at Brampton Civic Hospital. CTOs are blockages that have typically been present for more than three months. Patients with this condition experience symptoms such as chest pain, pressure or tightness, shortness of breath, dizziness or palpitations and fatigue.
A highly-advanced, minimally-invasive procedure, CTO PCI is currently available for patients at Brampton Civic one day a month as part of an innovative collaboration with St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto. Dr. Shy Amlani, Director of the Cardiac Cath Lab at Brampton Civic, reached out to his counterpart, Dr. Chris Buller, at St. Michael's Hospital, one of the best cardiac centres in Canada, about setting up a CTO PCI satellite program here a couple of years ago.
“We were seeing a lot of patients with multi-vessel disease,” said Dr. Amlani. “Patients would come in with a heart attack and we'd find another complete blockage. I knew that they'd benefit from getting that other artery opened to preserve some of that heart function.”
Having the expertise to perform this catheter-based procedure here means no need for invasive (i.e. open heart) surgery or to travel to a downtown Toronto hospital for care. The CTO PCI team at Osler, which includes Dr. Amlani and Dr. Farrukh Hussain, have perfected this technique, studying under a small group of internationally recognized pioneers in the field. Together with their cardiology team, they perform approximately 30 of these complex cases a year with a success rate of nearly 90 per cent. Osler has one of the largest PCI programs in the country, performing more than 2,000 coronary interventions a year, including CTO PCI.
“Patients with CTO are often people who are in the prime of their lives, people who may have had a silent heart attack and have been experiencing symptoms for a long time,” said Dr. Amlani.
As for Sandeep, he spent one night in the hospital following the procedure and left feeling great. “I don't think it could have gone any better. I was so pleased that the doctors said I could just continue living my life just as I was before the blockage was found,” he said. “I am looking forward to getting back to running again this summer.”
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