Cardiac Patient Avoids Surgery

Mike Pittaro, Ph.D., 58, has a stressful job. He’s the director of corrections for Northampton County, and he teaches and writes books on the side. So, when he felt lousy for a few weeks, with some mild chest pain, he chalked it up to work, maybe too much caffeine or spicy food.

But just before Thanksgiving in 2024, Pittaro was reading e-mails when he felt dizzy and sick to his stomach. Then his vision blurred. He asked a coworker to call a nurse from the medical department. Someone called an ambulance, and he was taken to St. Luke’s Anderson Campus. Certain he was having a heart attack, he prepared for the worst.

Pittaro did not experience the worst, however. Thanks to St. Luke’s expert heart care, he has managed to regain his vigor and get his life back on track – all without surgery.

St. Luke's Heart & Vascular is an eight-time nationally ranked 50 Top Heart Hospital dedicated to delivering unmatched, patient-centered care. From the most complex cases to routine procedures, St. Luke's embraces innovative technologies to deliver the highest quality outcomes for all heart and vascular conditions. Leading the region in heart and vascular care, St. Luke's performed open heart surgery in 1983 and continues to be the first in the region to pioneer new and advanced procedures to this day.

Initially, it seemed Pittaro could be suffering from ventricular fibrillation—a condition that causes the heart to quiver instead of pump blood normally—which would be less serious than a heart attack but would still require surgery and an implant. But then Electrophysiologist Steve Stevens, M.D., determined that his patient actually had ventricular tachycardia, a type of abnormal heartbeat, which was an even better diagnosis.

“There’s a really big difference between [ventricular fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia], and Dr. Stevens was really cool about it,” Pittaro says. “He showed us graphs and gave us detailed explanations and said he didn’t think we needed to do surgery. Immediately, I had a sigh of relief.” 

Stevens and the St. Luke’s University Health Network care team prides itself on its “cut last” philosophy—saving surgery as a last resort.  So, Stevens sent Pittaro home with a heart rate monitor to keep track of his heart rate for 30 days and a list of small lifestyle changes that would mitigate the condition.

“I went from ‘I should be almost dead to not dead but need surgery to making sure I’m not dead with some lifestyle changes,’” Pittaro says.

Over the last several months, Pittaro has focused less on strength training and more on cardiovascular exercise, ramped up his fruit and vegetable intake, and cut out caffeine. He’s limited certain carbohydrates and started practicing mindfulness to help manage his stress—which Pittaro calls his “arch enemy.”

At every turn of Pittaro’s St. Luke’s experience, he says he was blown away by not only the thoroughness and the care, but by the courtesy of everyone on staff, which helped make a terrifying ordeal less so. And when Pittaro’s mother suffered a heart attack in January of this year and had to go through similar testing, Pittaro was happy she went to St. Luke’s, knowing she was in the best hands.

“She saw the same team I saw,” he says. “My mom and dad have nothing but praise. They took good care of her.”

See Pittaro’s video testimonial here: https://vimeo.com/1071147144/780fe9242d?share=copy.