Latest news with #GianniAngelini
BBC News
3 days ago
- Health
- BBC News
DIY SOS star Mark Millar to walk with surgeon who saved his life
A television star who went through open-heart surgery is to walk alongside the surgeon who saved his SOS' Mark Millar suffered a heart attack while open water swimming in the sea at Clevedon earlier this year."The NHS gave me a second chance at life. I enjoy my free time and seeing friends, and life seems simple but it's very full now," he Millar will join others walking 10km around Bristol's harbour to raise money for the Bristol & Weston Hospitals Charity, with his surgeon Prof Gianni Angelini. Mr Millar said there were a few "red flags" in the run up to his heart attack that he dismissed as "aches and pains.""I was getting indigestion in the middle of the night, and I kept having numbness in my left arm which felt like I had an injection."I was also getting exhausted in the afternoons."When the heart attack happened, it felt "like a ratchet strap" around his Millar's life was saved by his friends and his inflatable swimming was told by surgeons at the Bristol Royal Infirmary's Heart Institute that he had cardiovascular disease and needed immediate surgery."It turns out it was hereditary, my dad died from a heart attack. "I could live on triple filtered water and lettuce leaves for the rest of my life and my body would still produce this cholesterol," he told BBC Radio Bristol. Mr Millar said he had been given a "second chance" by the surgeons who saved his life, and wanted to give something back."A 10k walk for me now is like running a marathon, but I've been given the chance to do this walk and I'm going to do it with my doctor," he Big Bristol Walk leaves from the Amphitheatre at 10:00 BST.
BBC News
12-04-2025
- Health
- BBC News
Award for heart surgeon who created sewing machine-inspired device
A surgeon who was inspired by his aunt's sewing machine to invent a pioneering heart surgery device has been given an Gianni Angelini, a surgeon at the Bristol Royal Infirmary, was one of many surgeons faced with the problem of being unable to stitch a moving heart during coronary artery while visiting his family in Italy in the 1990s, he watched his aunt use a sewing machine to stitch a pair of his trousers - and was inspired to create a stabilising surgical has now been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Coronary Artery Surgery for his work on The Angelini articulated stabiliser. "I was visiting the family," said Prof Angelini. "I'd just bought a pair of trousers which needed to be shortened."My aunty, a seamstress, was doing the job. And suddenly, I saw the foot of the sewing machine which was pressing against the trousers."And I realised then, I needed something like that."Prof Angelini and his team at the Bristol Heart Institute then pioneered a new technique to perform coronary artery bypass surgery on a beating heart using his enables operations to take place without having to slow the patient's heart down, which improves how the heart is protected and increases the chances of survival for this, a bypass machine had to be used to pump blood around the patient so the heart could remain still and be operated on – a procedure which can come with complications. Prof Angelini designed the stabiliser device and devoted two years of his career to its development. The device was made of stainless steel and cost about £800, but it could be reused hundreds of disposable stabilisers are more commercially available, prototypes like Prof Angelini's stabiliser have paved the way for modern-day inventions. He said: "When I started my training in the early 1980s, the mortality for coronary artery bypass surgery was around 15% to 20%; now it is down to 1% to 2%."In 2024, Prof Angelini was named as one of the Seven Wise Cardiac Surgeons of the Golden Age of the 1990s, a reference to the Ancient Greek tradition of naming the seven wisest men. Prof Angelini said he was honoured alongside some of his heroes at the Old Greek Parliament."It was very exciting, because the other six people were what I'd describe as my heroes," he said."I was really the baby of the bunch because these guys were the generation before mine."I felt pleased with this as a recognition from my peers and to be in the presence of such distinguished surgeons."
