Pierre Elias

They checked him out.

They ran a battery of tests and they said, listen, you're not having a heart attack.

We hear a murmur in your heart.

You should go see a doctor about that, but you're fine.

You should go home.

He feels better.

He goes home.

He's waiting to see his primary care doctor.

Two months go by and he has an episode of the same sensation, this chest tightness and shortness of breath.

And he goes back to that same emergency department.

But this time he's in respiratory distress.

They end up having to send him to their intensive care unit.

They have to intubate him and put him on a ventilator.

And at that point, they do an ultrasound of his heart and they see that he has severe valvular heart disease.

We have four valves in our heart and like the plumbing at home, it can get rusty or leaky.

And if it gets really severe, it can become life-threatening.

Columbia is a world-leading center in valvular heart disease.

And so they were calling me in the middle of the night saying, we really need to send this guy to you.

I said, absolutely.

He came and I spent the rest of the night working on him.