"I walked straight into a sea of red!" recalled Eric Choi, MD, FACS, Chief of Vascular Surgery, after having completed an emergency procedure in August on 63-year-old Thomas Rios. Nearly a dozen members of Rios' family – sporting an array of cherry red Temple garb – greeted him in the waiting room, awaiting news of his condition. "Before I could even tell them what was going on, I thought, 'How do they all have Temple shirts?'" recalls Dr. Choi.
As it happens, his patient is also a Temple employee. Currently, Rios serves as Assistant Facilities Manager in Temple University's Maurice H. Kornberg School of Dentistry, but has been employed in various positions at Temple sites over the past 30 years. His extended family – including his wife, two daughters, brother-in-law and two sisters-in-law – also call Temple their "home" away from home.
Rios came to be on that Temple operating table quite suddenly.
"Earlier in the summer, I was just lounging around and watching TV. When I stood up, I abruptly felt a terrible pinch in my back," Rios says. "Soon, the pain had escalated to the point that it hurt no matter if I was sitting, lying down or standing."
When his pain could no longer be tolerated, Rios' wife rushed him from their North Philadelphia home to Temple's Emergency Department, where a CT scan pinpointed a large abdominal aortic aneurysm, located in his lower back…and ready to burst. "Temple's emergency staff immediately started prepping me for surgery," recalls Rios.
During the three-hour surgery, Dr. Choi used a minimally invasive stent – an "endovascular repair" – to shrink the aneurysm and relieve pressure from the area. Instead of needing to make a large incision in his patient, the stent allowed him to enter through the groin and fix the problem from inside the blood vessels.
"Aneurysms are common, but an impending rupture is rare and requires immediate intervention," says Dr. Choi. "Patients often die before arriving in the Emergency Department when an aneurysm bursts. Sometimes they even burst during surgery. Thomas was really lucky that he arrived in time."
Out in the waiting room, Dr. Choi delivered the good news of a successful surgery to the worried family members. Rios was discharged from Temple about a week after the procedure and was able to return to his regular activities just two months later.
Healthy, strong and thriving, Rios returned to his regular job duties at Temple on November 4, and now routinely exercises in his basement gym – that is, when he's not busy creating new memories with his family.
"I'm so grateful to all of the polite and courteous physicians, nurses and professionals who were involved in my care at Temple, but I'm especially beholden to Dr. Choi – who put me back together again. He's the greatest," he added.
