Dr. Mike’s duties: Heart stents on weekdays, laundry on Saturdays

By Macon Ramos-Araneta | Posted on Mar. 17, 2013 at 12:01am | 1,387 views

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Dr. Michelangelo Sabas

HE performs stenting from the wrist “to fix the heart” of people who had heart attacks and those with heart problems most days of the week, but on Saturdays, he does the laundry at home.
“It’s washday for me on Saturdays! It’s a washing machine and a dryer for me on Saturdays,” says Dr. Michelangelo Luzod Sabas, commonly known as Dr. Mike, an internist-cardiologist or interventional cardiologist at the Medical City in Pasig City.
Despite being one of the country’s topnotch interventionists who perform coronary angiogram (diagnostics), angioplasty (intervention) and stenting through the wrist, Dr. Mike tells MST in an interview that he washes their clothes because they don’t have a house maid.
“It’s only the three of us in our house. We’re not used to having people around us. Since we got married in 1997, we were only two until my wife gave birth,” says Dr. Mike, who ‘s turning 46 on May 8.
Dr. Mike says his wife, an internist-turned full-time housewife, irons her own clothes while he attends to his own clothes and those of their seven-year-old daughter.
He feels relaxed doing household chores and attending to their daughter. “She was born one kilogram, 30 weeks, short of one and a half months. She has some delays, but she’s catching up. She’s in regular school. So my wife focuses on her,” says Dr. Mike, adding their first-born, a boy, lived for only nine days.
“That’s the syndrome of some doctors. Due to long schoolings and long trainings, they get married late and give birth late,” he says.
If not fixing the heart of people, Dr. Mike is embroiled in fixing everything in the house. He’s grounded in their house.
“I seldom go to malls or elsewhere. If I’m not a doctor, I’m a carpenter… I don’t require a carpenter in the house unless there’s some welding job. I also do electrical works. I install electrical [equipment],” he says.
Even on Sundays, he stays in the house, after doing hospital rounds to check on his patients.
“We’re just like that—leading a simple life. I’m simple but my wife is simpler. We don’t like fancy stuffs. The only piece of jewelry we have is our wedding ring. And I don’t even wear it because it might get lost. I remove it everytime I do stenting,” he says. “When someone gifted me a watch, I just gave it away because there are watches all over, even in cellphones.”
He wants everything to be simple. He remembers having a short hair in school because it’s easier to maintain and to shampoo.
But on the five remaining days of the week, Dr. Mike is busy fixing the heart of his patients as a cardiologist and an interventionist.
“Our advocacy here in The Medical City, among us interventionists-cardiologists, —we are doing procedures to fix the heart in non-surgical ways. So we are propagating to fix the arteries of the heart [coronary arteries] through the wrist,” he says.
“You know patients with heart attacks, those having blockages in the arteries, we can fix them through puncture in the wrist. There’s no need to open, no need for stitches and scalpel,” he says.
He says stenting from the wrist is much safer due to less complications, compared to doing it from the groin.
This innovation, he says, affords a patient more comfort since angiogram from the groin prevents him from standing for six hours unlike if it is done from the wrist where he can immediately stand up after the procedure.
Furthermore, it is cheaper because there is no hospital admission unlike the procedure from the groin which needs two to three days of hospitalization.
While the stent from the wrist or the so-called radial approach has been in the country for over 10 years, it is being resorted to only in case there’s a problem with the groin.
“If a doctor can’t access on the groin, the alternate procedure would be from the wrist. But now, our advocacy is do it first from the wrist and if there’s problem, the backup would be from the groin,” says Dr. Mike.
He says the possible complications from the groin include bleeding from the punctured site. On the contrary, there is virtually no bleeding from the wrist because it is easily compressible.
Stroke and heart attack, which are less likely to occur if the procedure is done from the wrist, may also occur. “But these two are rare complications—one in every 40,000 cases,” he says.
The Medical City conducts more than 85 percent of its interventional cardiology procedures from the wrist.
While it is now widely used in the country and at The Medical City for the past three years, Dr. Mike says there are still consultants from other hospitals who are more comfortable doing it from the groin. He also says this is not the first option in other hospitals.
He does not want his accomplishments and recognitions publicized, but prefers talking about his intense passion about making available to all Filipinos the procedure he’s doing—stent from the wrist to fix the heart of the people that would eventually prolong their lives.
“I just dream the cost would go down and everybody gets this procedure. Right now, I’m optimistic due to the country’s improving economy. I hope because more and more patients are availing of the services. I am surprised. You can tell by the census that what we’re doing has been increasing. It covers those from the ABCD class,” says Dr. Mike, who hopes this would soon be included in Philhealth’s “package treatment.” The procedure amounts to P50,000 to P55,000.
He says stenting has been proven to reduce mortality and morbidity rate among heart patients. If a patient suffered a heart attack, the situation could turn worse, but this can be prevented by stenting from the wrist, although there is no 100-percent guarantee, he says.
Dr. Mike says he never thinks about the cost when a patient comes to him. “My No. 1 concern is to serve patients first without regard if I will be paid or not…..I just talk about the hospital cost since I can’t give it to them. I respect the business part, that’s viability of the hospital. But on my part, that is the least consideration. The first was for me to serve the patients’ needs during that time…. If I don’t get paid, no problem. We don’t keep a list,” he says.
He believes he does not need to go to a government hospital or on a medical mission to serve. “There are many around us who are in need of help,” says Dr. Mike, who is also a consultant of the Philippine Heart Center.
He concedes he can reach out to more poor people in being a rural doctor, if only provincial hospitals could be equipped with a catheter laboratory which would cost millions.
At one point in his life, this “one-of-kind” doctor felt the “calling” to become a priest. After graduating from elementary in his hometown Batac, Ilocos Norte, he went to Manila, and enrolled at the Christ the King Mission Seminary in Quezon City.
“I had this calling, but there was this ‘pull’. My sisters were then studying in medical school… I may have considered becoming a priest, but my role in the seminary was ‘infirmarian.” I was assigned to take care of the sick [seminarians] during that time. We had a role. I was still in first year, I was an infirmarian. So the medical field was ingrained in me even in seminary,” he says.
Upon leaving the seminary with a view towards Medicine, he took up Biology at University of Sto. Tomas and then pursued Medicine in the same school. During that time, her two elder sisters were doctors, one of them an internist who died in the US at the age of 34. There was also an uncle-doctor who was a father figure in the family. An adopted sister, now a nurse, stays with their 87-year-old father, a civil engineer.
Dr. Mike says he met his wife, a MedTech graduate at the UST College of Medicine. They were classmates and seatmates. “I used to copy from her since our seating arrangement was alphabetically arranged-me Sabas and she was Rodriquez,” recalls Dr. Mike.
He was a typical happy-go-lucky student who was seldom seen in the library reading because he would rather spend time with his “barkadas.”
Speaking about his wife, he says they were “sweethearts” since their sophomore years. “There was physical attraction because my wife was very beautiful,” she says.
After graduation, they got married in her wife’s hometown of Mariveles, Bataan.
“We spent our own money for the wedding because we didn’t want to ask. We were very idealistic. We saved up money for the wedding by working in provincial hospitals in Laguna and Cavite,” he says.
Dr. Mike says while they passed the US medical licensure examinations, they did not pursue their dream to proceed with their planned trainings due to several reasons.
Asked if he intends to practice his passion in a foreign land, Dr. Mike says he is committed to spending the rest of his medical profession at The Medical City.
“No, I just go abroad for trainings. There are many Filipinos who have heart problems so I want to do my passion and advocacy of The Medical City here in our country,” he says.
“I would just like to think of myself as a simple doctor at The Medical City whose foremost objective is to give the best service. I am happy where I am now, in fact, more than happy,” says Dr. Mike.
He says internal medicine gives him the chance to interact with patients and know their problems. With cardiology as his subspecialty, he finds the heart a very dynamic organ that does not stop working.
Dr. Mike says he gets some “adrenalin rush” in his profession as there is no dull moment with cardiology.
“If you really want to spell the difference in the field of health, a big chunk of this problem is with the heart,” he says.
Aside from doing household chores at home, Dr. Mike says bringing back to life a patient who is on the brink of death gives him fulfillment./.end