 Hello and welcome to the first edition of the Heartbeat from the Texas Heart Institute. I'm your host, Maya Pomroy. Since its founding in 1962 by world-renowned heart surgeon Dr. Denton Cooley, the Texas Heart Institute has been the leader in surgical innovation and groundbreaking clinical research dedicated to reducing the devastating toll of cardiovascular disease through innovative and progressive programs in improved patient care, education, and research. THI is leading the way to being the next first. We will take you on a journey inside THI and share with you the stories that changed people's lives, one heartbeat at a time. Today we introduce you to Dr. Stephanie Coulter, the founding director of the Women's Center for Heart and Vascular Health, and Scarlett Hankey, a young mother of two who discovered after the giving birth to her second child, she had been living with a serious heart condition without even knowing it. So when I was on the table, I was having a C-section, they said that I was having a lot of PVCs. They said, well, you know, it's normal to have a lot of PVCs, especially during childbirth, but this is too many, yes. I had visited a cardiologist and over a few weeks had determined that there was a problem there, but we didn't really know what it was, and my cardiologist at the time encouraged me to do genetic testing. My mom then got tested and had the same results, and then we just came to the conclusion, well, that's it. Didn't really believe it, and then it took a while to really understand that, yes, it is true, and this is why, because I just think it's a rare condition. It's not one that is seen all the time. So it took a few visits to the doctor to figure out, nope, that's right. Dr. Stephanie Coulter, director of the Center for Women's Heart and Vascular Health, an expert in cardiology and imaging of the heart, says ARVC may not cause any symptoms in its early stages. However, affected individuals are still at risk of sudden death, especially during strenuous exercise. In Scarlett's condition, I'm sure she has some abnormalities on imaging in the right ventricle, but she also has an abnormality of her left ventricular function, which is actually more serious, because the pumping chamber to the body is the left heart, and this left heart has thicker muscle, it has red blood in it, because it's the oxygenated blood that's coming from the lung that's being pumped to the body, and this chamber should have an EF or a squeeze of greater than 60%. So every time your heart beats, it should beat 60% of the blood out every beat. And so when she described her EF number being 32, she's basically squeezing only half the blood that could be pumped in a normal heart. Scarlett's heart was under considerable dysfunction and stress, but she did not have the symptoms of heart failure. Her heart's ability to pump blood had declined by nearly 50%, but her symptoms were benign. It wasn't an obvious diagnosis clinically to the physicians that were caring for you, and then when I heard you say you were diagnosed or right after you had a baby, I assumed they must have thought you had a peripartum cardiomyopathy, I bet. And so that would be very common, and yes, genetic testing for cardiomyopathies, it is becoming much, much more important. Scarlett, who is a new ambassador for the Texas Heart Institute, hopes that her story will motivate women to be proactive about their own heart health. Although her condition does not allow her to play some of the sports that she loves, you will find her on the Pickleball Court in Houston, where she hasn't skipped a beat. For the heartbeat, I'm Maya Pomeroy.