Failure To Rescue

The Day Frederick’s Heart Stopped Responding

Photo by Piron Guillaume on Unsplash

I once had a patient in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) that I never actually met, but I’ll never forget.

Fredrick was a 79-year-old who had open heart surgery, called a CABG (coronary artery bypass graft) or cabbage in the medical world. His new home was the CVICU. To keep his heart beating, he had returned from…