PHILADELPHIA — Carmen Quinones wasn’t feeling well when she got home one day last month after getting some blood work done to monitor her diabetes. She was short of breath and pale. She had to lie down.
Then her chest started vibrating.
About a year earlier, soon after her first heart attack, Quinones had a device implanted that would warn her when she was having another heart attack. Now, the alarm was going off, telling her to call her doctor. (If her heart problem had been more severe, a more urgent alarm with more vibrations would have told her to call 911.)
Her doctor sent the Woodbury, N.J., woman to the emergency department at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden, N.J. In short order, she was having a stent replaced. The old one was blocked.
Doctors later told her she probably would have had a heart attack in a day or so.