Paul Le Vesconte, 55, was at home in Bromley one
Sunday morning when he started feeling severe pain in the centre of
his chest.
He went to bed, but this did not relieve the
pain, and when his wife returned home she called 999 for an
ambulance.
Paul was attended by Emergency Medical
Technician Shaun Taylor in a car and an ambulance crew, Paramedics
Sonia Watling and Jacqui Lindridge, within a few minutes. They
carried Paul to the ambulance where, using specialist equipment,
they established that Paul was having a heart attack.
Jacqui said: “Usually we would take a patient
to the nearest A&E department, but tests on
Paul showed that he was having a life-threatening heart attack, so
we took him to King’s College Hospital in Lambeth. There is a heart
attack centre there, where we knew Paul would receive the best
possible level of care.”
At King’s College Hospital, Paul was handed
over to the cardiac team who confirmed he was having a heart attack
and admitted him to the operating theatre. Paul underwent a
pioneering procedure called primary angioplasty, where the blockage
in the artery causing the heart attack was removed by inserting a
small balloon and inflating it.
Within a couple of hours of arriving at
hospital Paul was in a ward recovering from his operation. In three
days he was back at home with his wife.
Paul said: “On the day, everyone did a fantastic job in coming
together to save my life, and it’s been great to meet them all
since then to say thank you.
“When the pain started I thought it was just
heartburn and never suspected it could be life threatening. It just
goes to show that if you’re having central chest pain, it’s best to
call an ambulance to make sure it’s not serious.”