Time is Muscle

Eugene Cauvin, DNP, has been super fit his entire life, but while jumping rope during an intense mixed martial arts class, he started having chest pains and felt like the wind had been knocked out of him.

It was a heart attack, but Eugene had two pieces of good luck: fellow martial arts classmate Sheri Sandel, MD, Northern Westchester Hospital’s (NWH) associate medical director, noticed something wrong and drove him to the hospital’s ER within 10 minutes; and NWH’s new cardiac cath lab was able to repair blockages in his heart within 45 minutes.

“They say time is muscle when it comes to treating a heart attack,” says Eugene, who lives in Pleasantville, NY with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, and is associate director of pain management and palliative care at NWH, his second career after retiring from the Air Force. Though he had perfect blood pressure, an active lifestyle and healthy eating habits, there was no warning before the heart attack. “I found out my condition was genetic and that I was a ticking time bomb. The catheterization showed a 95% blockage in the right coronary artery and a 90% stenosis in the left coronary artery, which were repaired with two stents, one in each artery.”

“Heart attacks result from blockages in blood vessels that carry oxygen and vital nutrients to the heart. When they last more than a few minutes, these blockages can cause permanent damage to the heart muscle and tissue,” says interventional cardiologist Dr. Carl Dietrich Reimers, director of NWH’s Cardiac Catheterization Lab and Northwell cardiology service line director for all of Westchester County. “Northern Westchester’s new cardiac cath lab offers patients the gold standard of care. In interventional cardiology, that means opening the artery within 90 minutes of first medical contact. What happened to Eugene Cauvin is the reason why it is so important to have a nearby cath lab. That means residents—who previously had limited access to this life-saving care-- no longer have to travel during cardiac events when every second is critical for the prevention of irreparable damage to the heart.”

Six months later, Eugene is back to his workouts and healthier than ever.

NWH’s cardiac cath lab is open 24/seven and offers diagnostic and interventional coronary angiography and stent placement for elective, urgent and emergency-level patients. It is an extension of the nationally renowned cardiac services program at Northwell Health’s Lenox Hill Hospital and is a regional center of excellence for interventional and procedural cardiac care. For more information visit https://nwh.northwell.edu/heart or call (877) 469-4362 for physician referral.