Cody Ash knows teamwork. He is junior varsity head coach and varsity assistant coach to the Payson-Seymour Indians high school basketball team in Adams County, Illinois. He is also a patient of John Hammock, MD, cardiac electrophysiologist, and John Arnold, MD, cardiothoracic surgeon, Blessing Health System. Drs. Hammock and Arnold teamed up with Cody recently for a first-of-its-kind surgery at Blessing.
“They complemented each other very well,” said Coach Ash. “Drs. Arnold and Hammock were very relaxed and trusted each other’s abilities.”
Cody knows doctors and surgeons almost as well as he knows basketball players. Born with three heart defects, the now 24-year-old had his first surgery – open heart surgery – at the age of 2-and-1/2-weeks. The surgery corrected his three original heart problems, but the resulting scar tissue left him with one heart problem for life, complete heart block.
“That’s when the electrical system in the top chamber of the heart does not communicate with the bottom chamber of the heart,” said Dr. Hammock. “It causes severely low heart rate, leading to fatigue and congestive heart failure.”
To correct that situation, Cody received a pacemaker at the age of six weeks to regulate his heart beat. Over the following years Cody had three other surgeries to either repair or replace his pacemaker. Last May, Cody needed surgery again to repair his pacemaker and faced a decision.
When children get pacemakers, as Cody was when he received his pacemaker originally, the unit is placed in the abdomen.
“Children do not have enough tissue in their chest to hold a pacemaker battery pack,” said Dr. Hammock.
In adulthood, the pacemaker must be located in the chest near the heart to work efficiently and effectively. In May 2017, facing a surgery to fix a faulty lead in his pacemaker, Cody was asked if he wanted to replace and relocate it.
“This one (surgery) would be riskier than the others,” said Cody’s mother, Andi Ash, about his pacemaker surgery.
The risk involved removing the pacemaker battery pack from Cody’s abdomen and the pacemaker lead from his heart, then placing a new pacemaker in his chest. The procedure required a cardiac electrophysiologist and a cardiothoracic surgeon working together.
While Dr. Hammock had done the procedure during his Clinical Cardiac Electrophysiology fellowship at the University of Oklahoma Medical Center, it is something that had not been done at Blessing Hospital.
“This is not something normally done in a community of our size,” said Dr. Hammock. “This is a procedure that most of the time would be referred to a larger metropolitan area. But now we have the skills on the medical staff at Blessing and the facility to do it.”
Cody decided to become the first patient to have a pacemaker replacement at Blessing Hospital.
“I trust Dr. Hammock completely,” Cody said. “The care he showed me and the confidence he had talking about the procedure made me feel very comfortable with him. My wife, mother and I all felt comfortable with Drs. Hammock and Arnold.”
“There was something about Dr. Hammock and Dr. Arnold,” said Andi. “They gave us a good vibe. We were all very much at ease with what needed to be done.”
To meet Cody’s need, Drs. Hammock and Arnold worked together in the Blessing’s new hybrid operating room.
“This highly-specialized operating room facilitated what we needed to get done,” said Dr. Arnold.
The hybrid OR combines the features of a traditional surgical suite with advanced imaging capabilities needed to perform the latest minimally invasive surgical procedures. The combination of equipment in one room creates a care environment dedicated to complex, minimally invasive procedures with the ability to convert to an open procedure surgical suite.
Dr. Arnold removed the pacemaker battery pack from Cody’s abdomen. Dr. Hammock then used a laser to remove the pacemaker lead from Cody’s heart and placed the new pacemaker in Cody’s chest.
The procedure went perfectly. Cody said he had minimal pain and was ready to get back on the basketball court almost immediately.
“One of the things of which we had to convince Cody was to take it easy for a few weeks following the surgery to not damage the new pacemaker leads,” said Dr. Hammock. “He begrudgingly took our advice.”
Within six weeks, Coach Cody was back in the game.
“When it was all said and done there were probably five or six departments within the hospital working together for three weeks to get this first-of-its-kind surgery at Blessing accomplished,” said Andi. “There were many people behind the scenes who made this happen. They all came together to make it work for us as a family. Everyone was wonderful. I would highly recommend Blessing.”
For more information on the services of the Blessing Heart & Vascular Center, go to blessinghealth.org/heart.