Eye on Health: Beacon team saves local leader from widow-maker heart attack

Jeff Rea thought he’d just overdone his workout on the exercise bike. Within minutes, he knew something was seriously wrong.

“I went very quickly from ‘I might have overdone it’ to ‘something more serious is wrong,'” said Jeff, president and CEO of the South Bend Regional Chamber of Commerce and former Mishawaka mayor. “I don’t even know how to describe it, because my whole life, you know, you get pain from different things. This is really different.”

That crushing pain turned out to be what cardiac emergency doctors call a widow-maker heart attack. Jeff’s left anterior descending artery, the main artery that supplies blood to the left ventricle, was 100% blocked.

“We have to open up the artery right away, because the longer we wait to open the artery, the more damaged the heart is going to be,” said Dr. Muhammad Aslam, interventional cardiologist at Beacon Medical Group Advanced Cardiology Specialists.

Jeff and his wife went straight to Memorial Hospital, where a specialized STEMI heart team was activated.

“From the time the patient gets to the ER, from the time the artery is opened should be less than 90 minutes,” Dr. Aslam said. At Beacon, the entire STEMI team must be in the hospital within 30 minutes, day or night.

Dr. Aslam and his team ballooned Jeff’s artery open through a minimally invasive procedure through his wrist, removed the clot and placed a stent. Rea’s heart function had dropped to 35% immediately after the heart attack, compared to the normal 60 to 65 percent.

Although Jeff’s artery was reopened, his recovery journey continued. Watch the full Eye on Health interview below to learn more about Jeff’s recovery and the importance of recognizing heart attack symptoms.