A 54-year-old male patient arrives in the emergency department complaining of severe chest pain that radiates to his mid-back along with dyspnea. He is morbidly obese, has smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for the past 20 years, and has two immediate family members who have died of heart disease. 1. What does the ED physician suspect is causing the patient’s symptoms?

2. What tests should the ED physician order?

3. Will surgical intervention be necessary, and if so, what procedure?

4. What procedure is typically attempted before surgery, where is that procedure performed, and by what type of physician specialist?

Explanation:

1) The ED physician would most likely suspect that the patient is having a Myocardial infarction.

2) With all of the details provided the physician should order the following tests to be done on the patient in order to locate affected areas, abnormalities, blood type, clots, etc.

EKG , Cardiac catheterization, Blood Type and cross match, Coagulation studies, CBC, and a Full chemistry profile

3) Surgical intervention depends on whether or not the EKG scans come back clean or not if they do not then surgical intervention may be necessary in order to save the patients life. This would be accomplished with a procedure known as Percutaneous coronary intervention

4) Sometimes before attempting surgery an Interventional cardiologists may decide to perform a balloon angioplasty procedure. This basically involves the physician passing a tube through your clotted blood vessel in order to open it and maintain it open.