Mike has been a part of the Heart Team at Huntington for many years, during which time he has consistently demonstrated enthusiasm, dependability, kindness, and a strong work ethic. Every commander should be lucky enough to have a thousand soldiers like Mike. When the OR and Cath Lab teams were combined to perform TAVRs many years ago, Mike seamlessly integrated himself and was readily accepted by the Cath Lab team—something that took others much longer to achieve.

Over the past few years, Mike’s leadership qualities have continued to emerge and become especially evident on a particular day in October, during a TAVR procedure on a 92-year-old patient in the Cath Lab. Immediately after deployment of the heart valve, the patient became profoundly hypotensive and was found to have a new pericardial effusion on echocardiogram. While these events are often caused by aortic injury, it soon became clear that the TAVR wire had perforated the heart, resulting in left ventricular injury and active, life-threatening bleeding.
 
The doctors quickly placed a pericardial drain; however, the patient continued to bleed and remained unstable. It became clear that an emergent surgical intervention would be required in the Cath Lab to repair the cardiac injury. From the moment the patient’s blood pressure dropped, Mike sprang into action, fully aware that both cardiac operating rooms on the second floor were occupied. Calm and methodical, Mike began asking all the right questions needed to convert the Cath Lab into a cardiac surgical operating room: Should the surgical packs be opened? Should the heart-lung machine be prepared? Would operating loupes be needed? What equipment would be required in the worst-case scenario to save this patient?.

Without angst or drama, hallmarks of Huntington’s cardiac teams, Mike, along with Jora Senane and the Cath Lab and Operating Room teams, had the surgeon operating within minutes. Every instrument, needle, suture, and hemostatic device appeared exactly as needed, as if the procedure were taking place in Cardiac OR Room 5 rather than in the Cath Lab below. As the procedure progressed and multiple sutures were required to repair the fragile heart, Mike remained calm, supportive, and focused. Miraculously, the patient survived and is now doing well.

While the exact criteria for the DAISY Award may vary, it is difficult to imagine that Mike’s passion, expertise, compassion, teamwork, leadership, and heroism, particularly during this event, would not merit serious consideration.