ANDREA BETTONI
European Adult Male Patient

Hi, my name is Andrea Bettoni, in spite of my name I’m a 33 male.

At the age of 31 I suffered from a heart attack, during a morning run. Fortunately I was close to my parents’!

I was immediately hospitalized and I was put 2 stent. No doctors thought that it could be suspected to have a heart attack at that young age & with apparently excellent medical conditions (except the fact that I was a smoker !!!).

Since that I kept continuing have chest pain until I was hospitalized again and put a third stent.

My conditions, unfortunately, didn’t changed: being not convicted of the reasons of my heart attack and the misdiagnoses of the doctors I went to ( fortunately my oldest sister I a doc…. ), I underwent a whole series of scans and tests.

I’ve been visited by a haematologist that prescribed new blood tests, I found out I suffer from a genetic mutation called MTHFR 1298 – Homozygous.

I kept on searching for the disease I was suffering, I wasn’t satisfied & and most important, I wanted “my life” back.
Looking back now, I can say that that thought helped me the most.

I had a coloured ecodoppler that revealed that I had a lots of very small clothes in every artery; doctors tried to destroy them by giving me aspirin but the clothes grew up until there was 90% occlusion of the superior mesenteric and the internal left carotid: a biopsy has been made on my right temporary artery & “finally” I had the response: I was suffering of Fibromuscolar Dysplasia.

By this time I can say that I’ve been lucky because the carotid stenosis grew until 100% twice: I just suffered from some worst headaches with no other consequences.

Nowadays I’m pretty fine, I just have to take my pills everyday and one ecodoppler a month : after all, I still consider myself a lucky one, maybe just because I’m still here & can talk about my “bad experience” hoping that it can be useful for somebody else.