Lifesaving surgeon has undergone four open-heart surgeries
This story was originally published Sept. 3, 2008.
Dr. Marcus Balters understands what it's like to put his life in a surgeon's hands.
Balters, who helped save Paul Latschar's life by stitching a bullet-torn vein near the police officer's hip, has himself undergone four open-heart surgeries. The first was performed when he was 6 years old, the last two years ago.
His mother, Sharon Buckles Balters of Lincoln, said: "So Marcus knows what it's like to be all cut up and to be bleeding and to be thinking, 'Is this it?' "
Balters comes from an accomplished family that included an uncle who was a physician, but he said it was his own health struggles and experiences with physicians that compelled him to become a surgeon.
The 39-year-old has a heart defect that caused him to have extremely high blood pressure as a young boy. It put him at risk of suffering a disabling stroke.
Those experiences have helped him appreciate the fear and vulnerability that a patient endures when facing major surgery.
"I think it's a big part of who I am and how I take care of patients," he said.
Balters, who practices mainly at Creighton University Medical Center and the VA Medical Center hospital in Omaha, was at Creighton the night of Aug. 20, when Latschar was rushed into the emergency room.
Balters and Dr. Robert Fitzgibbons immediately operated on the officer, who had been shot during a traffic stop. Balters found the vein from which Latschar was gushing blood and sewed it shut.
Latschar was released from the hospital early this week.
As they have all along, health problems follow Balters. He learned last year that he has a kidney condition that could eventually require dialysis.
"In my life, that's how it goes, you know?" he said.
Balters' heart trouble was discovered when he was 6 at a mall's free blood-pressure screening, given by volunteer nurses on Mother's Day. His parents were stunned to learn he had high blood pressure, which physicians later found was caused by a narrowing of the aorta, the main artery carrying blood from the heart.
Dr. Randy Ferlic of Omaha put a tube into the aorta, which fixed the problem for 10 years. But Balters needed another surgery on the aorta at 16, this time done by Dr. Bill Fleming. That surgery also took care of his problem -- for a time.
The two met again about 15 years ago, when Balters was a student at the Nebraska Medical Center. Fleming recalled Balters saying, "I don't know if you remember me, but you operated on me a long time ago."
"It's one of the happy things that happens to me when I see somebody I operated on do well," Fleming, who is retired and living in Bennington, said last week.
Balters graduated from Texas Christian University in 1991 and the University of Nebraska Medical Center College of Medicine in 1996.
Three years later he was married, had a toddler and a second son on the way while doing his surgical residency at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston. He coughed one morning while getting ready for work and felt a sharp pain. He coughed again and a glob of blood shot from his mouth.
Then blood erupted from his mouth and nose. He recalled thinking to himself: "I'm bleeding to death right now."
His wife, Sarah Beth, hustled him to his hospital while he bled into a bowl.
He told her she should eventually remarry if he died because their kids needed a father. He told her he wanted to be buried in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln.
Tests indicated that the left side of his chest was filled with blood. Balters said the graft inserted into his aorta in the second surgery had eroded over time, perhaps because of an infection, and had ruptured.
He was transferred to another Boston-area hospital, where a renowned heart surgeon, Dr. Lars Svensson, operated on him for more than seven hours. In the process, Svensson discovered that another portion of Balters' aorta also was enlarged.
In 2006, he had a fourth heart surgery, again performed by Svensson, to repair the enlarged area of his aorta, which had worsened considerably since being discovered seven years before. That problem, too, has been remedied.
Balters, who had joined the private practice in Omaha of Drs. Richard and Steven Feldhaus after finishing his surgical training, became a full-time Creighton medical faculty member last December. A thoracic and vascular surgeon, he continues to do surgeries in that role. He primarily operates on lungs, chests and veins.
Balters said he has cut back on his hours in recent months, working 60 to 80 hours a week instead of 80 to 100.
He doesn't want to have to kick himself for not spending more time with his family. He and his wife now have two boys and a third due in October. He also teaches Sunday school at Omaha Vineyard Church in west Omaha and is assistant pack master of the Dundee Elementary Cub Scouts.
Balters said he needs to have his medical condition followed by doctors, lose some weight, exercise more and eat healthier. If more health problems arose, "that would be a bummer," he said, but he will not obsess over it.
"You're trying to help people, trying to do the best that you can, trying not to harm anybody and hoping your outcomes are good," he said. "That cop was a dramatic story but, you know, that's the kind of stuff we do all the time."
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