When Carol Patten needed open heart surgery in September 2025, she knew just where to turn — Muhammad Aftab, MD, of the University of Colorado Anschutz Department of Surgery, who had performed the same operation on her husband, Walt, in 2024.
“Dr. Aftab is one of the best, and we're very lucky that we live here in Denver and got to see him,” Walt says. “When she had her surgery, I didn’t have any stress, because I knew that she was at the best possible place.”
Walt, 75, and Carol, 74, live in Highlands Ranch, where they enjoy spending time with their son and grandson. Walt is also a competitive runner, traveling around the country to participate in triathlons, 5Ks and 10Ks. When he got to a certain age, he decided to get his heart tested.
“Walt has a huge family history of heart disease,” Carol says. “Neither his parents, grandparents, or great-grandparents lived past their mid-70s. He and his running buddies, now that they are all over 60, decided they should get their calcium score tests.”
A calcium score test is a CT scan that measures calcified plaque in heart arteries to assess heart attack risk. A score of 0 indicates a low risk, while scores over 100-300 indicate moderate-to-high risk.
Walt’s score came in high — over 6,000 — so a week after running a 10K in Florida, he met with Satya Nelluri, MD, an associate professor of cardiology in the CU Anschutz School of Medicine. Nelluri ordered an angiogram — an imaging test that reveals blockages in heart arteries — which found that Walt had three critically blocked arteries and needed emergency cardiac bypass surgery.
Aftab, who was on call the day Walt came in, accepted the case.
“Coronary artery bypass grafting, the bypass surgery for blocked heart arteries, is one of the most common procedures we do in cardiac surgery,” says Aftab, associate professor in the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery. “We take the artery from the chest and a vein from the legs, put the patient on a heart-lung machine that keeps their blood pumping, and then we bring the heart artery from the left chest, and connect it to the front artery.
“Sometimes we take the veins and arteries and connect them to the heart arteries beyond the blockage, so that we bypass the blockage and then connect those veins and arteries to the big artery called the aorta. This way we bypass the blockage, reroute the blood back to the heart muscle, and get more blood flow back to the heart.”
During surgery, Aftab also found that Walt had a hole in his heart — known as a patent foramen ovale, or PFO—so he closed that as well. It made Walt’s recovery tougher, but now, Walt is nearly back to his old self, even running races again.
“I look to the future now,” he says. “I didn't have any great hopes of making it to 80, based on my family history, and the last time I saw Dr. Aftab, he said my chances now of having a heart attack are pretty slim, which is great. I can expect to live at least another 10 years, and I didn't have that feeling before.”
Carol’s road to open heart surgery began not with a calcium score, but with more classic symptoms of heart disease — fatigue and shallow breathing after exercise when she was working out at a nearby rec center.
“Then one morning, we had our grandson here for breakfast, and I almost blacked out,” she says. “Things went dark, and I felt an imbalance for several days. After that, my shortness of breath just got worse and worse.”
Carol was hopeful that whatever was wrong with her heart could be fixed with a stent or two, but after meeting with Aftab, she learned she needed the same surgery her husband had undergone a year earlier.
“Tears immediately started rolling down my face, and Dr. Aftab grabbed a box of Kleenex for me,” she remembers. “He kept saying, ‘Carol, you’re going to do it the way you're supposed to do it.’”
Seeing what Walt went through with his heart surgery made Carol much more knowledgeable and confident when it was her turn on the table, Aftab says.
“She was super-experienced and knew exactly what we were talking about,” he says. “When he was sick, she was at his bedside, and when Carol’s turn came, it was like we were working with pros. They knew exactly what heart surgery is like. She went home after five days, and I saw her a month later, and she made an amazing recovery with no additional symptoms.”
Now that their heart surgeries are behind them and life is beginning to return to normal, the Pattens are thankful to Aftab and his team at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital for giving them a new lease on life.
“I don't necessarily like the word blessed, but I'm very grateful for the science, for the doctors,” Carol says. “We have a lot to look forward to. We've been married 56 years — Walt took me to my high school senior prom — and it’s really good that we're both still here.”
Aftab is pleased to see both of his patients doing so well, and he says their cases illustrate why it’s important to pay attention to symptoms and talk to your doctor if things don’t feel right.
“Don't take heart disease lightly,” he says. “If you have chest pain, if you have experienced shortness of breath, anything unusual, go to your PCP, get checked out, and do the right testing. Bypass surgery has a very excellent outcome for a long time, and patients do very, very well. I'm confident Carol and Walt are going to do well for a long period of time.
“Coronary artery bypass grafting is one of the most effective and satisfying procedures for us,” he adds. “We see a patient come in with chest pain, an inability to do things, and once you restore the blood flow back to the heart muscle, he's doing amazing. How many 75-year-olds do you see running marathons?”