Amit Pawale, MD
When 24-year-old Andrea Giraldo arrived in New York City from Miami to ring in 2018 with friends in the East Village, she had no idea how gravely ill she would soon become.
Her ordeal began with terrible leg pain, which sent Ms. Giraldo to a New York City hospital that is not affiliated with the Mount Sinai Health System. There, she was treated for blood clots in her leg vein and sent home. But later that night in her friend’s apartment, she had trouble breathing and collapsed.
The Emergency Medical Services ambulance took her to Mount Sinai Beth Israel (MSBI). Now unconscious, with very low blood pressure and a low blood-oxygen level, Ms. Giraldo was placed on a breathing machine. A CAT scan revealed that she had large life-threatening clots in her lung arteries. She received clot-busting medication (tPA) with no effect.
MSBI physicians contacted Amit Pawale, MD, Assistant Professor of Cardiovascular Surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital, and a team of ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation) specialists led by Dr. Pawale was dispatched immediately. They placed Ms. Giraldo on an ECMO machine, which supported her heart and lungs and prevented imminent cardiac arrest. ECMO works by draining blood from a patient’s vein and pumping it to an artificial lung or oxygenator that adds oxygen, removes carbon dioxide, and sends it back to the patient.
Her blood pressure and oxygen level normalized, and Ms. Giraldo was transported to The Mount Sinai Hospital on ECMO support. Dr. Pawale and his team performed open heart surgery, removed large blood clots from her arteries, and discontinued ECMO support. Vascular surgeons implanted an intravascular filter to prevent future clots from reaching her heart.
Four weeks after her surgery, Ms. Giraldo returned home to Miami, where she gradually resumed her work and daily activities. “I’m so glad I ended up at Mount Sinai,” Ms. Giraldo says. “I got the best care. The nurses were amazing, and Dr. Pawale literally saved my life.”
Dr. Pawale attributes Ms. Giraldo’s excellent outcome to exceptional teamwork throughout the Mount Sinai Health System: the Pulmonary Embolism Response Team, and the doctors, nurses, and technicians in the Cardiothoracic Surgery Intensive Care Unit.
The ECMO machine was used to help provide Andrea Giraldo with life-sustaining support.