{"id":140663,"date":"2025-02-28T18:51:20","date_gmt":"2025-02-28T23:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=140663"},"modified":"2025-02-28T18:51:20","modified_gmt":"2025-02-28T23:51:20","slug":"stroke-patient-saved-by-2nd-opinion-at-st-lukes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/?p=140663","title":{"rendered":"Stroke Patient Saved by 2nd Opinion at St. Luke\u2019s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo caption: Michole Pignato with Dominic (left) and Rocco Pignato.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Michole Pignato, a teacher, credits St. Luke\u2019s physicians with saving her life when an artery in her brain was on the brink of rupture.<\/p>\n

Pignato, 43, of Northampton, was out to dinner with her teenage children when, after feeling a snap in the back of her neck, the room seemed to spin. She couldn\u2019t stand or walk without assistance. She went to a hospital (not St. Luke\u2019s) and for more than a month, she struggled with recurring symptoms.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when her friend Dr. Francis Burt, who happens to be a doctor at St. Luke\u2019s, urged her to seek a second opinion at St. Luke\u2019s \u2013 specifically, from neurologist Dr. Daniel Ackerman,\u00a0the Network\u2019s\u00a0Interim Chief of Neurology.<\/p>\n

Dr. Ackerman saw her very quickly, and he immediately identified an arterial dissection, or tear. He then referred her to St. Luke\u2019s neurosurgeon Dr. Martin Oselkin. Upon review of her scan, Dr. Oselkin called Pignato the same day and urgently instructed her to check in for surgery. He performed the procedure the following day, placing two stents to repair a pseudoaneurysm, a potentially life-threatening condition\u00a0involving\u00a0blood collection inside of a vessel wall that can lead to rupture.<\/p>\n

Her operation was on Nov. 15, 2023. While she did make a full recovery, her strokes left her with challenges such as learning how to read again and regaining ability to use her left hand. Miraculously, she was back in the classroom just a few weeks later, shortly after Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

This month, the American Heart and Stroke associations nominated Pignato to participate in the Go Red for Women movement’s 2025 Woman of Impact fundraising competition. For more information, go to\u00a0http:\/\/www2.heart.org\/goto\/donatetomichole<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis experience made me realize that strokes\u2014and heart disease\u2014don\u2019t discriminate,\u201d she says on her fundraising webpage. \u201cThey don\u2019t care if you\u2019re fit, active, or take care of yourself. They can hit anyone, at any time.\u201d She wants to use her experience as a platform to advocate for women, especially young moms, to make time to take care of themselves mentally and physically.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

About St. Luke\u2019s<\/strong><\/p>\n

Founded in 1872,\u00a0St. Luke\u2019s University Health Network<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites. With annual net revenue of $4 billion, the Network\u2019s 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\u2019s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke\u2019s Children\u2019s Hospital.<\/p>\n

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke\u2019s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania. In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only four-year medical school campus. It also operates the nation\u2019s 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\u2019s, a member of the Children\u2019s Hospital Association, established the Lehigh Valley\u2019s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.<\/p>\n

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare\u2019s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency, and patient satisfaction. St. Luke\u2019s is a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World\u2019s Best Hospital. The Network\u2019s flagship University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from Fortune\/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in\u00a02021 when it was identified as\u00a0THE #1 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.\u00a0In 2021, St. Luke\u2019s 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\u2019s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Information provided to TVL by:
\nSam Kennedy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo caption: Michole Pignato with Dominic (left) and Rocco Pignato. Michole Pignato, a teacher, credits St. Luke\u2019s physicians with saving her life when an artery in her brain was on … Continue reading Stroke Patient Saved by 2nd Opinion at St. Luke\u2019s<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[69,482],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-the-valley","category-press-release-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Michole-Pignato.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140663"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=140663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/140664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=140663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=140663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevalleyledger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=140663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}