Mitch Proaps recalls that he felt “terrible” walking just half a mile to his car after attending a Golden State Warriors game in December 2021. He stopped to rest several times, hobbled by severe chest pain and fatigue. In fact, he says now, he had noticed feeling progressively worse over the months prior to that cold-weather walk. More episodes of angina. More shortness of breath walking up a flight of stairs.
Mitch, 56, was worried that his heart health was declining—again. In 2005, he’d had three stents placed to clear blockages, with good success. In 2015, he’d been prescribed nitroglycerin pills to help control angina, but he hadn’t needed to take any pills in recent years. Now, it seemed, things were going downhill again.
“Two or three months before that attack at the basketball game, I had started taking one to two pills a week, and then three to four pills just to get through the day,” Mitch says. “It was really scary. I didn’t dare leave home without my pills, but over time they became less effective in controlling the pain.”
Like many of us, Mitch had increased his activity level at the start of the pandemic, walking and hiking—even trying Zumba to lose weight and stay healthy. But that burst of activity had gradually shifted to accommodate his pain and discomfort. Now he was filled with fear that something was wrong.
“I knew I had to do something quickly, so I made an appointment with a cardiologist,” Mitch explains. “After performing an angiogram [a scan that shows how blood is flowing through the heart], he told me I needed open-heart surgery. But I had recently moved to Hayward and I didn’t have a big support system to help me through months of rehab after a big surgery like that. I decided I needed a second opinion.”
Working Together to Find the Best Solutions
To get that second opinion, Mitch met with Conrad M. Vial, M.D., a cardiothoracic surgeon at Mills-Peninsula Medical Center. Dr. Vial did not think that open-heart surgery was Mitch’s best option. To explore other options, Dr. Vial consulted with a colleague, interventional cardiologist Christian Spies, M.D.
Together, the two physicians examined Mitch’s heart angiogram. “The imaging showed us where blockages were occurring, and that an interventional procedure would be complicated, but possible,” Dr. Spies explains. The physicians recommended to Mitch that he have new stents placed in his heart through a cardiac catheterization procedure, a less invasive alternative to open-heart surgery.
“Dr. Spies put me at ease immediately, projecting not only the confidence to help me without open-heart surgery, but also exhibiting a cultural mindset of collaboration— consulting with other physicians,” Mitch says.
The collaboration went a step further as Dr. Spies was planning for Mitch’s procedure. Mills-Peninsula had recently hired a specialist in chronic total occlusion, Elliott M. Groves, M.D., and he agreed to perform Mitch’s procedure with Dr. Spies.
“Mitch’s case is just one example of the remarkable collaboration we have between surgery and cardiology,” Dr. Spies says. “We have the skill set to use any available technique to address heart disease. But for our team, it’s a matter of selecting the best choice for each patient—the option that will give them the best outcome for the longest time frame.”
Innovative Cardiovascular Procedures—Today and Tomorrow
Mills-Peninsula Medical Center is one of the region’s leading providers of cardiac catheterization procedures. Catheter-based procedures use a thin tube inserted into a large blood vessel for accurate identification of narrowed coronary arteries and to open blocked passageways to improve blood flow. As was the case for Mitch, catheter-based procedures can offer less invasive, safer alternatives to traditional surgery for diagnosing and treating cardiovascular conditions.
Every year, expert interventional cardiologists at MPMC’s Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory perform more than 1,500 catheterizations to diagnose and treat cardiac issues.
“With the addition of Dr. Groves to our team, we can do almost everything in a minimally invasive way, if that is what’s best for the patient,” Dr. Spies says. “We are lucky to practice at a time where we can open arteries that have been blocked for decades, and repair or replace valves, all without open-heart surgery.”
Indeed, in the last ten to 15 years, interventional cardiologists have seen an incredible expansion in the types of procedures that can be done via catheterization. The rapid pace of innovation, however, means that many medical technologies become outdated and in need of replacement or upgrade within seven to ten years.
To ensure that MPMC patients like Mitch continue to have access to the latest technologies, the Mills-Peninsula Hospital Foundation is raising money to enhance the Cardiac Catheterization Lab with the next generation of tools. The planned upgrades are a $5.5 million initiative within the new $70 million, five-year philanthropic campaign, Building the Mills-Peninsula of Tomorrow: For Our Community and Generations to Come.
One of the planned upgrades is a tool known as fusion imaging, which integrates several imaging modalities into one. It allows, for example, an X-ray to be combined with a CT scan or echocardiogram on one screen. This can help improve physician accuracy and speed during a procedure, which can also mean less radiation exposure for patients and staff, as well as shorter recovery times.
“We would not have all the advances at Mills-Peninsula without the generosity of donors in this community,” Dr. Spies acknowledges. “Their partnership has put our team in a position to actively contribute to the development of new technologies for cardiology and cardiovascular disease, and that is very exciting for all of us.”
Getting Back to an Active Life
As for Mitch, three days after he had three stents placed to clear blockages, he took a walk—and ended up hiking four miles. “I took it easy, but I wasn’t experiencing any pain or difficulty breathing and just kept going a little further, until I realized I had gone a long way, considering I just had surgery,” Mitch exclaims. A small incision in his wrist is the only visible sign that he recently had a major heart procedure.
Mitch adds that the relatively short trip from his home in Hayward to Mills-Peninsula made the power of the Sutter Health network evident to him.
“I’ve moved a lot recently, from Sonoma County to the Sacramento area and now the East Bay, and I’m very happy for the seamless care I’ve received across the Sutter Health network.”