{"id":19376,"date":"2015-03-23T18:20:38","date_gmt":"2015-03-23T23:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/?p=19376"},"modified":"2019-08-12T12:56:03","modified_gmt":"2019-08-12T17:56:03","slug":"patient-success-stories-dr-allan-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2015\/03\/23\/patient-success-stories-dr-allan-stewart\/","title":{"rendered":"Special Patient Video: What Do Christine &#038; Pedro Have in Common?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Update: Please note that Dr. Allan Stewart is no longer performing surgery at Mount Sinai Hospital.]<\/p>\n<p>On a recent trip to New York, I was very fortunate to meet Christine Pittelli, a full-time mother of two girls, and Pedro Mejias, a world record power lifter who has bench pressed 645 pounds.<\/p>\n<p>I had a great time with\u00a0Christine and Pedro. Hearing their success stories was both inspiring and educational. I\u00a0learned a lot about\u00a0bicuspid aortic valves, aneurysms, valve repairs, minimally invasive techniques and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/surgeons\/dr-Allan-Stewart-Miami-Florida.php\">Dr. Allan Stewart<\/a>, their surgeon. For these reasons, I just posted this video.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe data-src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/LFqrvLdyUik\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Many thanks to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/journals\/user\/christinepittelli\">Christine Pittelli<\/a> and Pedro Mejias for sharing their stories with me and our community. Plus, a special thanks goes out to Dr. Allan Stewart for his extraordinary care of our\u00a0patients. Dr. Stewart has successfully treated 100+ patients from our website. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Keep on tickin!<br \/>\nAdam<\/p>\n<p>P.S. For the hearing impaired members of our community, here is a written transcript of the video.<\/p>\n<p>Adam Pick: \u00a0 Hi, everybody! It&#8217;s Adam with HeartValveSurgery.com. As patients who have been diagnosed with aortic valve disorders and aortic aneurysms are often confused about the surgical process for fixing those disorders, I wanted to meet with a leading cardiac surgeon and patients, to learn more about the steps and the tips for making it through heart surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: My name is Christine Pittelli and I&#8217;m from Madison, Connecticut. I am a full time mother of two beautiful children, 9 and 11 years old. I have two girls.\u00a0I was diagnosed when I was 16 years old. They informed me, from listening to my heart, that I had a heart murmur. Sometimes doctors would hear it and then other times, doctors couldn&#8217;t hear it at all. I was at an appointment, a routine physical, seven years ago. I was called and told I did not have what I thought I had; that I actually had a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/bicuspid-aortic-valve-symptoms.php\">bicuspid aortic valve<\/a>, which I knew nothing about. More concerning to them was an aneurysm in my ascending aorta.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: My name is Pedro Mejias and I&#8217;m from Brooklyn, New York. I&#8217;m a professional power lifter and I hold the world record of 645 pounds in the bench press.\u00a0I was going for regular check-ups since 2012 and she did an echocardiogram, she did a CAT scan, EKG. You know you have an aortic aneurysm and it&#8217;s 4.9. When she said it&#8217;s 4.9 that means I need to hurry up and get this thing taken care of.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: I was scared. I was very afraid. I scheduled something as soon as possible, and I went and had the MRI done.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: Everything came at once. I had to stop lifting. I can&#8217;t go to the gym. My whole life is going to change.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: The options I was given when I was told I need surgery was two choices, a mechanical valve or a tissue valve, a pig valve. I decided I was going to listen to my gut. Something was bothering me. For about a week, I just was thinking about things, and finally one night I got up and I went over to my computer and I started Googling my surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: I Googled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/aortic-aneurysm.php\">aortic aneurysm<\/a>. I Googled heart surgery.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: Up popped up something called minimally invasive surgery. Also who popped up was my surgeon that I ended up picking, Dr. Allan Stewart at Mount Sinai.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: Dr. Stewart&#8217;s article stood out to me. I was in the gym when I was reading it, and after I finished reading it I made an appointment to get a consultation.<\/p>\n<p>Dr. Allan Stewart: \u00a0When I meet a patient in the office the first thing I do is to try and disarm their apprehension. To take away the fear that they&#8217;re going to have open-heart surgery and that sets them at ease initially. Then I like to explain the operation in plain terms.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: I explained to him what the previous surgeon had told me my options were. He looked at me and he says, &#8220;I can repair your valve. You won&#8217;t need a mechanical valve. You won&#8217;t need the tissue valve.&#8221; I remember my jaw dropped. I read about it online but hearing it from a surgeon saying, &#8220;I can repair your existing valve.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Allan Stewart: Christine Pittelli came to my office as a second opinion. She was only offered a mechanical valve replacement through a full <em>sternotomy<\/em><em>,<\/em> meaning a cut that was going to be about a foot long from her neck down to her abdomen. We talked at length about having a minimally invasive approach. She was shocked that that was possible, and we <a href=\"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/2014\/03\/25\/aortic-valve-repair-sparing-dr-khoynezhad\/\">repaired her aortic valve<\/a>. That way she was not on a blood thinner for the rest of her life. She has a perfectly functioning valve now, which opens properly, closes properly, and should last her the rest of her life.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: He was cool. From the way he sit and talked and everything, he was straightforward. He didn&#8217;t beat around the bush. He just said, &#8220;You know you&#8217;re going to have this surgery. You need it. You don&#8217;t have to do it now but you need it. You&#8217;re going to have it, whether you do it now or later. It&#8217;s up to you to pick and choose when you want to do it.&#8221; Putting it like that, I chose to do it immediately; I didn&#8217;t want to wait.<\/p>\n<p>Allan Stewart: \u00a0The problem with Pedro is that he had a massive very, very thin aorta, which I think was due to rupture or tear. If he left that alone, one day he was going to put 700 pounds on his chest and his aorta&#8217;s just going to blow apart so he needed to be fixed. Pedro is doing fantastic now. He&#8217;s seen me back in the office. He&#8217;s got a tiny little scar, which is well healed. He&#8217;s already started lifting weights again and feels good and keeps in touch regularly.<\/p>\n<p>Pedro Mejias: Mount Sinai was amazing. It made my time short. My stay in the hospital was short. It didn&#8217;t feel like a week.<\/p>\n<p>Allan Stewart: I believe that patients are responsible and partners with their surgeon in healing. It&#8217;s one of the reasons why I reassure patients before they go into the operating room that they&#8217;re going to be okay. I think a positive mindset is essential because they want to know that they&#8217;re going to get better. If they believe they&#8217;re going to get better, they will get better.<\/p>\n<p>Christine Pittelli: \u00a0I&#8217;m feeling well and I&#8217;m just very grateful I&#8217;m doing well so far. Knock on wood!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19376","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-surgeons-clinics"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19376\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heart-valve-surgery.com\/heart-surgery-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}