A Young Mother’s Close Call: A Life-Threatening Clot Removed with Penumbra’s CAVT Technology

Elizabeth Simmons was 27 and pregnant when she was struck with a life-threatening pulmonary embolism. Her fourth pregnancy had been generally uncomplicated. Elizabeth was busy chasing her three young children and hosting friend gatherings like barbecues.

One day, 31 weeks into her pregnancy, Elizabeth knew something was off when she woke up and had trouble breathing. “It was like something was sitting on me,” she said. “I was trying to tell myself I was having a panic attack or something.”

She asked her husband, Jordan, to come home from work because she wasn’t feeling great and needed a nap. As soon as he saw her, he insisted that they go to the emergency room. She looked gray, he told her.

“He just knew something was wrong,” Elizabeth recalls, “which saved my life.”

“She presented to the ER because she had acute shortness of breath and chest pain. The ER physician activated the PE response team and ordered a CT angiography of her chest,” said Dr. Robert Cirillo, an interventional radiologist at Owensboro Health Medical Center who treated her. They found a widespread pulmonary embolism — a clot that limits blood flow to the lungs. It was a complicated case given her pregnancy, but in consultation they decided to treat her quickly with advanced therapy.

Watch Dr. Cirillo discuss Elizabeth’s CAVT treatment.

Elizabeth said her care team laid out the options, which included thrombectomy with Penumbra’s Lightning Flash^® device, a minimally invasive procedure that would remove clot from her lungs with technology called computer assisted vacuum thrombectomy (CAVT™). We have to do something to save you and baby’s life, they told her.

But the doctors also told Elizabeth that she wasn’t stable and asked her to sign a paper authorizing an emergency C-section if it became necessary. “That hit me like a ton of bricks and kind of put it in perspective, like, this is really happening,” said Elizabeth.

“It kind of broke my heart, to be honest,” she said. Elizabeth feared she would never meet her son.

“Once I started the CAVT procedure, within five or six minutes I had already extracted most of the clot on that side,” said Dr. Cirillo. “She responded quite well and very fast. She was discharged home the next day.”

After the procedure, “I felt everything come off me. It felt like a whole person came off of me.” Elizabeth said. “I didn’t realize how out of breath I had been. Within minutes, I felt like myself again and the relief that I felt was amazing.” A couple months later, she gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Lenox.

Elizabeth wants people, especially young women like her to know, “pregnant or not, it can happen to you — even if you think it can’t. I was 27. I thought I was great. It can happen to you.”

Learn more about CAVT.

Important Safety Information
Additional information about Penumbra’s products can be located on Penumbra’s website at https://www.penumbrainc.com/products/peripheral-thrombectomy-cavt/. Caution: Federal (USA) law restricts these devices to sale by or on the order of a physician. Prior to use, please refer to Instructions for Use for complete product indications, contraindications, warnings, precautions, potential adverse events, and detailed instructions for use. Risk information can be found at peninc.info/risk.

The clinical results presented herein are for informational purposes only, and may not be predictive for all patients. Individual results may vary depending on patient-specific attributes and other factors.

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