January 27, 2018 was a
typical Saturday for Elias
Miro. The 48-year-old chef
spent much of the morning
running errands before
taking a nap around midday.
When he awoke three
hours later, something was
wrong.
I felt a little discomfort
in my chest and my left arm.
There was a pain in my left
arm, and that was weird,”
Elias recalls. “I said, ‘Oh,
maybe I slept on my arm
wrong or something.’ But it
wasn’t going away.”
For Elias the solution
was simple — he’d sleep off
whatever was causing the
pain. But his girlfriend,
Liz, had another idea.
“She was like, ‘You’re not
going back to bed if you’re
not feeling well. That’s
weird of you. That’s weird.’
She called a friend of ours in
the building who is a medical
assistant. And he took
my blood pressure and said
it was a little elevated, little
concerning,” he says. Liz
told Elias to take aspirin,
which helps prevent heart
attacks by stopping the formation
of clots that block
blood flow to the heart and
insisted he go to the nearest
emergency department for
further treatment.
But Elias didn’t want
to go because he says he
didn’t want to spend his
Saturday night at the ER.
After much cajoling from
Liz and threats of ending
their almost four-year-long
relationship, Elias finally
conceded. Liz drove him to
the emergency department
at NewYork-Presbyterian
Queens.
At the emergency room,
he was immediately triaged
and sent for an electrocardiogram
(EKG).
“The doctor said it was a
very concerning EKG. They
told me, ‘We think you’re
having a heart attack right
now,’” he says. Elias was
rushed to the catheterization
lab, where the on-call
cardiologist planned to insert
a stent, a small wire
mesh tube, into the arteries
of the heart. This stent
would keep the arteries
propped open, allow blood
to flow to the heart.
“After about 30 min, he
was in the cath lab, where
the interventional cardiologist
injected a dye in
his arteries and took some
x-rays of his heart. It was
found that the main artery
was blocked and had caused
an extensive heart attack,”
says Dr. Dimitrios V. Avgerinos,
assistant professor
of cardiothoracic surgery at
Weill Cornell Medicine and
a cardiothoracic surgeon
at NewYork-Presbyterian
Queens. “Multiple attempts
were made to insert a stent.
However, they were unsuccessful
due to the extensive
deposition of calcium inside
the artery.”
Unable to insert the stent,
the cardiologist called in
Dr. Avgerinos to perform an
emergency bypass surgery.
With heart bypass surgery
or coronary artery bypass
surgery, blood vessels from
another part of the body are
used to repair the damaged
arteries in the heart. To
keep Elias’s heart beating
throughout the surgery, a
balloon pump — a mechanical
device that increases
myocardial oxygen perfusion
TIMESLEDGER | 20 QNS.COM | FEB. 21-27, 2020
while at the same time
increasing cardiac output
— was placed in his chest.
“I woke up Sunday in a
hospital room, and I could
just see my family was in
front of me,” Elias remembers.
After three days of recovery
in the hospital, Elias
was discharged and started
to recover at home. Over six
weeks, Elias began transforming
his way of life with
a focus on longevity.
He says: “I have a
nephew and I’m like an important
male-figure in his
life teaching him how to be
a NewYorker! Throughout
this, I was thinking about
him and my girlfriend. I
want to be around another
50 years. I don’t want to
miss out.”
In the months since
the heart attack, Elias has
also stopped smoking and
drinking socially and exercises
more. He also listens
to Liz more.
“Whenever I argue with
my girlfriend now, she just
says ‘Aspirin,’ which is her
way of saying ‘shut up, listen
to me.’ Because she gave
me an aspirin and it helped
thin my blood, which the
doctor told her was a great
idea. So she just shuts me
up with aspirin. I’m like,
‘Okay. I owe you that. You
can have this one again.’”
Elias returned to work
by March. He sees a cardiologist
quarterly. He says
he’s back to his old self,
thanks to the lifesaving
treatment Dr. Avgerinos
performed.
“My surgeon was amazing.
He was always so professional
and made me feel
at ease. His bedside manner
is what they should
teach in medical school,”
he says. “He was also that
way with my girlfriend and
my family. Everyone felt
like they were in the loop
when he came out and let
them know what was going
on. And whenever I
reached out to his office for
any questions, I got an immediate
answer. So it made
me feel like he was engaged
and that he cared, and he
made me feel like I wanted
to get better to show him
that he did a great job.”
Two years after his
health scare, Elias joined
Dr. Avgerinos on the floor
at Madison Square Garden,
when he accepted the game
ball at the St. John’s University
basketball game on
January 28, 2020. “It was
an honor to stand there as
a healthy man, representing
the hospital that I am
so grateful for.”
To make an appointment
with a NewYork-Presbyterian
Queens cardiologist,
call 718- 670-2087.
AMERICAN H E ART MONTH
Life-saving treatment at New York-Presbyterian Queens
“Everyone felt like
they were in the loop
when Dr. Avgerinos
came out of surgery. So
it made me feel like he
was engaged and that he
cared, and he made me
feel like I wanted to get
better to show him that
he did a great job.”
Elias Miro
/QNS.COM