23-Year-Old Girl who Suffered Massive Heart Attack Saved by Cardiologists at Jackson South

By: Krysten Brenlla

A Hungarian native studying business management at her local university, Apollonia Babos, 23, decided to take a year off before graduation to move to the United States, where she lived with a host family in San Francisco. During her time there, she met her best friend. On August 10, 2024, they decided to take a cruise together.

Everything seemed normal throughout the cruise – until day five, when Apollonia started to feel strong chest pains.

“We did the same thing as every other day we were on the cruise – we had dinner, drank piña coladas, danced together, and went to the arcade,” she said. “We decided to go back to the room because we were tired – I didn’t have any pain during the day or night – but when we stepped into our room and I sat down, I started to feel the pain in my chest.”

At the time, Apollonia tried to lie down, walk around, and take a shower. The pain didn’t get better, so she and her friend decided to visit the cruise’s medical office, where they ran multiple tests.

“I was fine,” she said. “I remember walking by myself and doing everything with no issues.”

The medical team told Apollonia’s friend that she appeared stable, and suggested for her friend to go back to the room while they completed the tests.

Soon after her friend left, Apollonia suffered a sudden cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for eight minutes while the medical team attempted to resuscitate her.

After she was revived, the team immediately called an emergency vessel to take Apollonia to a hospital in Key West, where she was then transferred by helicopter to Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson South.

“We received a call at our home in Hungary that something serious happened, and Polli was in a hospital in Miami,” said Laszlo Csaszar, Apollonia’s stepfather. “We were shocked, and decided to pack and travel immediately there.”

“When she first arrived to Jackson South, it was about 10 hours after her cardiac arrest, and she was critically ill – almost everyone thought she would be gone,” said Bashar Obeidou, MD, an interventional cardiologist at Jackson South. “She was intubated and not responsive; she had a lack of profusion to her brain, and her blood pressure was extremely low.”

Dr. Obeidou and his team immediately placed a heart pump to raise Apollonia’s blood pressure and support her heart muscle function. Then, they started a cardiac catheterization procedure, which involves inserting a thin, flexible tube into a blood vessel and threading it through the heart to examine it.

“We immediately found the problem,” Dr. Obeidou said. “The main artery in the front of the heart was completely blocked and clogged, which is what triggered everything – from her initial pain to the cardiac arrest.”

For more than two hours, Dr. Obeidou and his team removed the clots and placed a stent in the artery.

After the procedure, Apollonia spent several days in the intensive care unit recovering.

“The day after the procedure, she had no response. But, on Saturday, she started to show some response to painful stimuli. Her kidneys and liver took a hit from the cardiac arrest, which is what we call cardiogenic shock with multi-organ failure – statistically, mortality rates for these critically ill patients is 70 to 80 percent,” Dr. Obeidou said. “By Tuesday, she was wide awake and responsive. Her blood pressure was holding, so we removed the heart pump, and we removed her ventilator later that day. By Wednesday, she was doing much better, with her own questions as to what happened.”

Apollonia went from 25 percent heart function to 45 percent in just eight days after the procedure. After 11 days in the hospital, she was able to walk on her own and go home.

“At Jackson South, I felt safe and I knew that everyone was doing a great job – everyone genuinely cared about how I was doing and feeling,” Apollonia said. “I think that was the most important thing for me, because I knew that everything would be okay.”

Two weeks after the procedure, Apollonia met with her cardiologists back in Hungary, where they performed an echocardiogram – a scan used to look at the heart and its nearby blood vessels – and discovered that her heart function had improved to 53 percent, with further progress expected. A normal heart functions at about 50 to 70 percent.

For the future, Apollonia hopes to finish her program in the United States, and get back to the things she loves without any concerns.

“I still remember Jackson’s slogan – miracles made daily – and I definitely think one was made in August,” Laszlo said.

“To the Jackson South team – thank you for giving me another chance to live my life,” Apollonia said.