Lisa Kimbrell lived a healthy and normal life before two major injuries in a year nearly ended it, and it took multiple teams of heart, vascular and lung surgery experts at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to save her.
In August 2022 the northern Alabama native was involved in a near-fatal wreck, and she ended up at a local hospital with a traumatic brain injury and a ripped aorta. Her aorta was grafted, and she was recovering when, in July 2023, two dogs attacked her and sent her back to the hospital. The dog bites became infected, which spread to the graft on her aorta and her esophagus, and she went into septic shock.
Her sister and caregiver, Rebecca Bickerton, remembered what a representative at the local hospital told her.
“She’s already coded several times, and they’re about to airlift her,” Bickerton recalled. “They said we needed to try to get there as soon as we could.”
She was taken by helicopter to Vanderbilt University Medical Center, where doctors infused blood that then leaked out again. The news was grim — her aorta, still damaged from the car accident, had ruptured above the graft where it tore previously. Meanwhile, her esophagus was badly torn.
“It looks like a nuclear bomb went off in there,” Bickerton recalled one doctor telling her.
Caitlin Demarest, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Thoracic Surgery, said Kimbrell’s condition was 100% fatal without medical intervention, but even with surgery, there was a 75% mortality rate. “I don’t think any of us expected her to survive,” she said.
Doctors were not sure they could save her life, but they were going to try.
“Lisa knew the gravity of her situation preoperatively, and the entire CVICU staff took great care to provide support to both her and her family in a very thoughtful way,” said Kait Brennan, DO, MPH, assistant professor of Anesthesiology, who cared for Kimbrell preoperatively. “Cases like this require both coordination and excellence in all areas to be successful.”
Christine Deyholos, MD, assistant professor of Vascular Surgery, brought Kimbrell to the operating room to extend the aortic graft known as a TEVAR to stop blood loss. But this was only a temporary measure, Demarest said, “because although it stopped the hemorrhage, the TEVAR graft would eventually need to be removed due to infection.”
After that procedure, Deyholos joined with Demarest and Ashish Shah, MD, professor and chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery, to perform a thoracotomy, opening her chest to again patch the aorta, a procedure called descending aortic replacement surgery. Shah holds the Alfred Blalock Directorship in Cardiac Surgery.
Doctors also had to perform an esophagectomy with esophagostomy, removing her esophagus and creating an opening to her esophagus in her neck. “It was just a good team effort,” Demarest said.
“Vanderbilt saved my life,” Kimbrell said. “They were a godsend.”
Kimbrell spent months in the hospital recovering, depressed and still disoriented and having difficulty remembering due to the traumatic brain injury from the car wreck. Demarest credits her sister for keeping her alive.
Bickerton kept encouraging her sister. “Nobody can make you better but you,” she said.
When Kimbrell left the hospital just over a year ago, she came to live with her sister. She pushed her to get out of bed and walk, to continue to recover. But she still had a bag attached to her esophagus, a reminder of the procedure to save her life.
Recently, Kimbrell returned to VUMC, where Demarest performed another procedure to reconstruct her esophagus. She can now eat and breathe normally.
“I think the medical team at Vanderbilt has been spectacular,” Bickerton said. “Every doctor, every nurse has been amazing.”
