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.
About St. Luke’s
Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 21,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites. With annual net revenue of $4 billion, the Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.
Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school campus. It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 52 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 500 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke’s, a member of the Children’s Hospital Association, established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.
SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency, and patient satisfaction. St. Luke’s is a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital. The Network’s flagship University Hospital earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from Fortune/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in 2021 when it was identified as THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY. In 2021, St. Luke’s was also identified as one of the 15 Top Health Systems nationally. Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.
Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy
