Heart doctors: Get checked and be a donor

KIE RELYEA

E-Mail

Print Reprint

Text Size:

tool goes here

BELLINGHAM - Doctors Andrew T. Coletti and Richard J. Leone hope to see two things come out of a Bellingham dentist's fight to survive heart failure.

First, they want people to listen to that voice that tells you to go see a doctor when something's not quite right - even if, like Jeff L. Frere, you don't think you have much to worry about.

"He is not the face of coronary artery disease that we imagine. We imagine the overweight person with diabetes, smoking, strong family history, high blood pressure, doesn't work out," Coletti said. "Jeff is really none of those things."

In fact, 30 percent of patients who have coronary disease have normal cholesterol levels, he said.

"Most patients don't know that," Coletti said.

Frere said his cholesterol level was good prior to his heart failure and that he considered himself in good health.

"His case brings to light just all the things we don't know about why people develop coronary diseases," Coletti said. "If he hadn't been lucky enough to come in here (Cardiovascular Center at St. Joseph Hospital), he would have been written off as one of these guys who just died suddenly in his sleep."

Don't wait for the classic, stereotypical signs: feeling like an elephant is sitting on your chest, or pain radiating down your left arm.

It might be too late then, Coletti said.

The heart specialists also want to encourage more Whatcom County residents to become organ donors. Nationwide, just 2,500 hearts are available for transplant annually. "That number continues to decrease although the need for heart transplants continues to go up. There are a half-million patients with heart failure who could use transplants, but the number of organs is not available," Leone said.