When Seconds Count...

Just one second, hardly enough to notice. How can something so tiny – the space of a heartbeat – make such a difference to your life?

Roberta Thomas knows. “My oldest daughter heard a commotion one morning and came upstairs. ‘What’s going on’, she asked. I said, “I don’t know. Daddy’s not well. He’s not breathing.” 

“Daddy’s not well. He’s not breathing.

Roberta’s husband Rod suffered a heart attack. In a second, everything changed.

Rod’s heart suffered a mechanical failure. Dr. Cathy LeFeuvre, a cardiologist on at Trillium’s Advanced Cardiac Centre, implanted a defibrillator to correct Rod’s heart rhythm problem. As Cynthia Young, advanced practice nurse cardiology and arrhythmia program, explains, “Think of the TV shows where the emergency team comes with the paddles and zaps the patient to restore the heart. Dr. LeFeuvre implants an internal defibrillator underneath the skin so no second is lost in restoring the heart rhythm in future.”

Every year, 75,000 Canadians have heart attacks.

If you have a heart problem, Trillium is the place to go.

Implanting devices to help heart rhythm problems is just one of the cardiac treatments available only at Trillium to our community.

Angioplasty is another treatment. When you have a heart attack, emergency response teams will contact our cardiologist on call and bring you directly to our catheterization lab, open 7/24. “That saves time because you bypass the whole emergency room process and you meet with the cardiologist immediately and we start the procedure,” explains Trillium cardiologist Dr. Anil Gupta.

Dr. Gopal Bhatnagar, chief of cardiac surgery, performs beating heart surgery to repair the heart without stopping it. Patients have improved quality of life with less recovery time and complications that can occur from typical bypass surgery. And Dr. Bhatnagar leads the only team in Canada to provide this life-changing treatment.

Saving time to get an accurate diagnosis also counts. Dr. Tarang Sheth, a cardiac radiologist, is pioneering new advanced imaging diagnostics for heart disease. “A cardiac CT takes just 15-seconds. In that short time, we will be able to evaluate a range of very important medical conditions that could be acutely life-threatening,” says Dr. Sheth.

Cardiac MR is a specialized imaging technique to solve specific problems in diagnosing heart disease. Trillium is the only hospital in our region to offer this service. “With additional funds, the impact to our patients would be immediate in terms of access time and the types of procedures they would have access to,” says Dr. Sheth.

 “Trillium couldn’t have done what they did for me if they didn’t have funding. And they can’t do it for others if they don’t get funding to allow them to do this for more people,” says Rod Thomas.

Dr. Kingston agrees. “Seconds do count. I think it’s really important to donate to a hospital where you have great care at your fingertips within seconds of needing it.”

Fred Ketchen, the Dean of Bay Street and one of Canada’s foremost educators on investing, will match your donation up to $1-million.

Donate to the Trillium Health Centre Cardiac Challenge. When every second counts, your donation counts twice.

Call 905-848-7575 to donate.