Roy Pepper was a patient who was briefly paralyzed after heart surgery.
History[]
Roy was in the hospital to have a TEVAR procedure to treat his aortic aneurysm. After that was complete, Pierce was concerned about the blood flow to his spine, so she asked him to wiggle his toes. When he was unable to do that, Amelia Shepherd checked for the Babinski reflex, which was present, indicating high spinal injury. Pierce induced hypertension and adjusted the stent, but that didn't work, so Derek Shepherd was called in to do a spinal cord drainage. When that didn't work, they believed he'd be left permanently paralyzed. However, Pierce had the idea to do an aneurysmoplasty, which had her use the aneurysm to build a new aorta with the sole function of providing blood flow to his spine. After sending Jo Wilson to get consent from his wife for open-heart surgery, she got to work. When she was finished, she woke him up in the OR and asked him to wiggle his toes. He was able to do so, indicating that she had been successful.
Relationships[]
Romantic[]
He is married.
Notes and Trivia[]
- He commented that he liked the feeling of the mattress in the OR.