Ready to be a Heart Hero? Read on...
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Be a Heart Hero! With your donation to the Northern Cardiac Fund, you can ensure that you give your family and friends the best chance possible to survive a heart attack. Your donation will be used immediately to fund a new Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump that will be available for our Interventional Cardiology Team to insert; ready to help a person’s heart pump blood when it cannot. |
February 9, 2019
The thing about heart attacks is that they’re never really expected. Not fully anyway. However, they do happen everyday. Especially in Northwestern Ontario.
And they are scary. Scary to watch. Scary to endure. Scary because they’re a life or death situation.
So what can you do? How can you help someone who’s had a heart attack? How can you save a life?
You might be surprised at how much of an impact you can have, even if you’re not a medical professional. That’s because you can give our team at the Hospital the exact tools they need to save someone’s life.
Right now one of our most critical pieces of equipment needs replacement. It’s called an Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump and while the name is a mouthful, its job is pretty simple. It keeps blood flowing when the heart isn’t strong enough to do so on its own.
When someone has a heart attack, pieces of the heart muscle can become damaged – damaged enough that the heart isn’t able to pump effectively. If this happens, our Interventional Cardiologists can insert a catheter directly into a patient’s artery. On one end of this catheter, there’s a balloon. The other end then gets attached to a computer which inflates and deflates the balloon in rhythm with the patient’s heartbeat. This helps the heart pump blood; an essential function.
The good news is, most of the time, this pump isn’t needed. Many patients are able to recover from a heart attack without it. The bad news is, it’s our sickest patients – the ones that are in the Intensive Care Unit - that require it. When they’re waiting for surgery to help fix their heart, there’s absolutely nothing else that will do.
With your donation to the Northern Cardiac Fund, you can ensure that you give your family and friends the best chance possible to survive a heart attack. Your donation will be used immediately to fund a new Intra-Aortic Balloon Pump that will be available here in our ICU; ready to help a person’s heart pump blood when it cannot.
Together, let’s take care of our hearts at home.
Make your donation at
www.healthsciencesfoundation.ca/cardiac
807-345-4673
Drop by the Donation Centre inside the Hospital at 980 Oliver Rd.