Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute celebrates 75th LVAD heart implant
MIAMI - Memorial Cardiac and Vascular Institute is celebrating its 75th LVAD heart implant. It's a device that keeps the heart going when the heart doesn't function on its own.
Ted Spinelli thought he had shortness of breath, bronchitis at most back in April, so when he went to urgent care, the last thing he expected to find out was that his heart, liver, and kidneys were failing.
He was sent to Memorial Regional Hospital.
"The whole team kind of took me in and started preparing me for what was, what they knew was to come," he said. "I had no clue what was to come."
Spinelli spent the next 3 months in the ICU, until he got strong enough and the doctors told him he was a candidate for an LVAD.
"Six days ago I turned 60, and I got to have my birthday with my family," he said.
Lisa Gill is the nurse who held his hand through the entire process.
"In my role, we see our patients very ill," she said. "Not everybody's a candidate for an LVAD so before they receive the LVAD they're basically as ill as they will ever be hopefully and once they receive the LVAD we see this life come back," she said.
Spinelli is one of the most recent LVAD patients. The hospital started implanting them in 2014.
Kenneth Lovino is the first.
"I was in bed bedridden for almost two years," Lovino said. "I didn't have much time left."
Because he didn't have anyone to speak to locally who had previously been through it, he now volunteered at the hospital.
"I come two to three times a week trying to get people motivated," he said, "and if they like to talk or trying to help someone else go through what I went through, trying to give them the courage."
Some people choose to live with their LVAD for the rest of their life. For others, it's a stepping stone to getting a heart transplant. For everyone, it's the device that gives them the option to choose.