On April 22, 2023, volunteer firefighter Fred Fedeler suffered a heart attack while responding to a fire in the Chester community. The sudden loss was felt across the state, especially in the emergency responder community. That loss was a key reason why Fedeler’s brothers and sisters in arms answered the call to do their part to help prevent tragedy in the future.
“When the pager goes off and you're able to respond, you go. So, like I say, I enjoy being able to hopefully help somebody in crisis. It's a rewarding job in my mind anyway,” said Kurt Christiansen.
For nearly 30 years, Christiansen has put others' safety before his own, but since last year's tragedy the focus on his health has become a priority.
“My wife had been talking about maybe getting this done for a while and that just makes you think harder about it and speed things up," said Christiansen.
Thanks to South Dakota Salutes, Christiansen and two dozen of the Lake County Volunteer Firemen went through Planet Heart screenings at the Avera Heart Hospital to make sure they were truly healthy enough to handle the stress of the job. He didn’t know what to expect but he had a sneaking suspicion.
"Thinking, oh, what's this going to find?" said Christiansen.
Completing the vascular screen and CT scan for calcium scoring, Christiansen’s numbers spoke for themselves:
"Yeah, they told me right away that my one score was a little higher than what they'd like to see," said Christiansen. It was 653.8, "so high risk," said Tarek Mahrous, MD, an interventional cardiologist with North Central Heart.
Dr. Mahrous explained to Christiansen that according to the screening metrics for calcium scoring, a totally normal score would be zero, whereas a high-risk score would be 400 or above.
"Basically, anything that shows plaque, that's a risk. It's different gradients of risk, but 400 and above is when I start to think, let's do something more about it."
For Christiansen that meant a return trip to the Avera Heart Hospital for a more in-depth evaluation with a cardiology team. After an EKG and updated vitals, it was determined that he was a candidate for a stress test.
"If the calcium score is high, there's a higher risk of having a plugged artery and the stress test will then sort out whether that high risk score is significant enough to warrant more testing or invasive testing or can we just treat it with medication?" said Dr. Mahrous.
Being a volunteer firefighter prepares you for a lot, but Christiansen says he was definitely nervous.
"Yep! Like there wasn't any stress to begin with and now you're going to do a stress test!" said Christiansen.
"There's a couple parts of the stress test. When we do imaging on a stress test, we'll get a baseline imaging of the heart blood flow to decide if it's normal at rest. And then we do a stress test. Oftentimes we put people on a treadmill and have them walk until we achieve a certain level. Then we do another imaging after the stress and then we compare the resting images and the stress images. If there's a difference, we can make an interpretation if there's a potential blockage that needs to be addressed," explained Dr. Mahrous.
"All in all, it's a good deal. You'll find out if you do have a problem, and if you do, hopefully you found it out soon enough and they can help you out with it," said Christiansen.
So did his heart pass the test? "Kurt did well on the stress test and it came back on a lower risk. So I think at this point the plaque that he has in his arteries is probably lining the artery and not actually plugging the artery. So we just treat him with medication and lifestyle," said Dr. Mahrous.
Like most things in life, knowing is half the battle. The other is putting in the work to adopt better habits. As for Kurt, he hopes his example and the one made by Fred Fedeler, both show others the importance of heart health.
"Yeah, I hope so. I mean, hopefully, the unfortunate deal that he went through and lost his life due to the heart issue, awakens everybody else to say, if it happened to him, it could happen to me," said Christiansen.
The Planet Heart screenings for the firefighters were paid for by the non-profit group South Dakota Salutes, whose mission is to provide first responders and military members with the resources and funding they need.
