Concepción Dos Santos Souza (33) was on the
brink of death
.
The hell that this medical student went through, who traveled to Brazil to undergo medium-complexity surgery, began on February 7, 2020 in a hospital in Teresina, in the state of Piauí, where they removed her gallbladder.
He was discharged the next day.
But during the return trip to Buenos Aires he began to feel bad and he noticed that he had
black lips
.
On February 10, he woke up with a cough, pain on the side of his chest, and shortness of breath.
He went to a medical aid where he was diagnosed with pneumonia.
Due to his university studies, he doubted the prognosis.
He interpreted that he was suffering from acute pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE).
It is that he had developed a thrombosis in the legs that quickly migrated to the lung.
He spoke to the doctors, but they did not believe his observations and downplayed the picture.
He returned to Teresina by ambulance, decompensated.
She was hospitalized for 35 days, several in intensive care and mechanical ventilation.
On March 25, she received a medical discharge.
But in December she suffered a new episode: she couldn't breathe because the acute thrombi in her lung had become chronic, hardened and caused her hypertension.
Concepción Dos Santos Souza (33) with her doctor, Marcelo Nahin, head of Cardiovascular Surgery at El Cruce Hospital.
Her birthday was when she was admitted to the Hospital.
“The search process was desperate.
They did not know how to explain what I had or give me solutions because the diagnosis was not common and they were not clear about its treatment.
They did not treat the basic pathology, but
each symptom that he presented was attributed to another
adjacent disease, ”says Concepción, in dialogue with
Clarín
.
When she received the diagnosis that confirmed her suspicions, the thoracic surgeon who treated her in Brazil gave her a 5-year life expectancy and advised against undergoing the surgery, called pulmonary thromboendarterectomy, because he considered it "very risky."
“The disease changed my life completely.
I went from being an independent person to being dependent on my family again.
I couldn't even walk from the room to the bathroom.
I was drowning and I felt too tired”, assumes Concepción.
He returned to Argentina to sell his belongings, but in Buenos Aires he suffered a new crisis.
And he decided to take the helm of his destiny.
He researched on the Internet and, among various referrals, he met Marcelo Nahin, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at Hospital El Cruce de Florencio Varela, who provided him with answers and treatment options.
“It gave me back the hope of continuing to fight for my health,” he confesses.
"Chronic Thromboembolic Pulmonary Hypertension is an infrequent disease whose non-specific symptoms often lead to
underdiagnosis
and underestimation of its real incidence", explains Nahin.
And he highlights: “When the gallbladder was removed, Concepción had major abdominal surgery in which the risk rises from 15 to 30% if heparin prophylaxis is not used.
And they didn't apply anything to her."
Concepción Dos Santos Souza (33) with her doctor, Marcelo Nahin, head of Cardiovascular Surgery at El Cruce Hospital, and the rest of the team that participated in the operation.
Her mother, Antonia, is also present.
Finally, in September 2022, she underwent a pulmonary thromboendarterectomy (TeaP) and was discharged a week later.
“It is an open-heart
intervention
to remove chronic incarnated thrombi.
It lasts about 10 hours because extracorporeal circulation is needed and subjecting the patient to deep hypothermia: cooling him down to a pre-freezing temperature and subjecting him to two circulatory arrests.
El Cruce is the only public hospital in Argentina that performs this surgery
, ”explains Nahin.
Concepción recovered her health and daily life.
She changed the color of her body, improved her respiratory quality and resumed her medical studies at the National University of La Plata.
She just has to take blood thinners for life.
"She promised me that she is going to specialize in this disease and I already told her that when she graduates I want to be the one to give her the degree," Nahin is excited.
The source of confidence in the professional
Mariana Sciglianese (44) perfectly remembers the day she noticed that her eyesight was not working properly.
“We were waiting for the bus and I realized that I didn't see the number until the bus arrived at the stop.
It was December and I had not yet turned 12 years old, ”she illustrates.
In the ophthalmological control, he was prescribed glasses and refused to use them due to his young age.
“At school and at the movies I always sat in the front.
I stopped all the groups just in case and the people who knew me already knew that, from afar, I couldn't distinguish them, ”he tells
Clarín
.
But over time, his astigmatism and nearsightedness progressed and he had to incorporate the glasses as an extension of his body.
The car's rearview mirror was a nuisance.
"How do you calculate parking between the magnification of the glasses and the distortion of the edges of the mirrors?" she wondered daily.
“My life had to adapt to my visual capacity.
At one point,
I had more than 5 pairs of glasses in use
: for going out, for running, for magnifying sunglasses.
Even an 'extra' one in the car because if the one I was using broke, I couldn't drive”, she reveals.
Mariana Sciglianese with her ophthalmologist Germán Bianchi.
He made a pilgrimage to various medical centers in search of a solution to his problem.
After multiple consultations with surgeons, he made the decision not to have surgery.
“
No one gave me certainties
and the intervention caused me panic.
I couldn't find anyone who would put themselves in my place and inspire me with the necessary confidence to give them the health and future of my vision.
Before my queries, a specialist came up with the idea of showing me the laser operation.
I came out with palpitations.
That was the end point, ”she defines.
But 2018 marked a turning point in its history.
The ophthalmological doctor who would later restore a better quality of life to him participated in his
running
group .
“In the middle of a conversation, in which I had to stop to clear my glasses, a colleague suggested that I ask for a turn with Germán.
I googled it and made up my mind, ”he recalls.
And he continues: “I went to see him at his office, we did the preliminary studies and with the results in hand we talked about the different possibilities.
He motivated me to carry out the operation and found a personalized solution for my case: placing a kind of contact lens, but intraocular.
It is a very thin lens that is placed in front of the crystalline lens and behind the iris."
Mariana underwent surgery in August 2019. When she opened her new eyes, she discovered the wrinkles and imperfections on her face that she had not noticed before.
“
At 41, I realized what it was like to see well.
The craziest?
Finding out that the shape of the lights were not vertical and horizontal stripes that came out of the focus, but that the halo is circular, ”she says, smiling.
“The case moved me because it deals with a patient for whom there was no solution a priori.
From her first check-up, I felt that she trusted me and that is a capital that I had to continue taking care of ”, analyzes Germán Bianchi, who is the head of corneal transplantation at Clínica Nano.
And he explains: “When I met her.
I realized that his visual problem was not limited to his eyes, but that it had been marking his life since adolescence and that, now, in his young adulthood, it was generating more and more limitations, close to the point of visual disability (when he was without glasses)".
The disease behind a number
The odyssey of Alejandro (60), who prefers to remain anonymous, began in 2016 and ended in 2022. For 6 years, specialists could not accurately diagnose what his pathology was.
It all started with the rise in PSA (Prostate Specific Antigen) values.
Given this scenario, he had been told to perform a prostate biopsy that yielded a PSA of 12 ng/ml (the normal value is less than 4 ng/ml).
Years passed and the number did not go down.
So, in 2019, with the indicator at 16, that is, four times more than normal, a second biopsy was performed, but they detected evidence of malignancy.
Given the disproportionate blood values of PSA, the uncertainty was capital.
The patient underwent a third biopsy that also did not yield negative results.
Maximiliano López Silva, urologist at the Argentine Center of Urology
Finally, in 2022, Alejandro knocked on the door of the office of Maximiliano López Silva, a urologist at the Argentine Center of Urology.
He already had PSA values of 30 ng/ml.
“Alejandro had
prostate cancer
.
It was detected by means of a prostate biopsy with an image fusion technique that allows joining the ultrasound images with those of resonance.
This greatly improves the diagnostic rate”, explains López Silva.
And he summarizes: “The patient underwent successful surgery.
With good recovery.
Currently, his PSA values are below detectable, he remains in control and without residual disease ”.
MG
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