by Roderick L. Ingram Sr.

A simple device born out of necessity helped keep health professionals safe during intubation.

“Were people going to use them or not? I don't know. We never really were able to follow up on that. But it was something else that we could potentially do to help one person. It was worth the effort,” Eric Espinal, M.D., said of the device, developed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sounding at times more like a community advocate for those in need than a highly accomplished physician, you get the impression that the work matters more than the outcomes.

Two quick calls. Two and a half hours. Two-point-five weeks. A team of five. We made 100.

But with his attention to detail, the outcomes are destined to be successful — even with such ad-hoc solutions during times of crisis.

You can tell Eric Espinal is a numbers guy.

And when he talks operating room, he also emphasizes the importance of the team’s collective work.

“We literally have a dozen [numbers again] people in there doing very complex tasks,” Dr. Espinal said.

But numbers and teamwork are just a part of what makes him so successful. It all begins with community. 

For and From Ohio

“I grew up in Hartville, Ohio, so not too far away. I went to Lake High School and have been a local guy just about all of my career,” Dr. Espinal said. The 1992 graduate of Northeast Ohio Medical University added, “While I did go away to University of Pittsburgh for my thoracic surgery [fellowship], I did my rotations and residencies at Akron City Hospital (now Summa Health).”  

He has been at Summa for about 24 years. He currently serves as vice president of surgical affairs, chair of the Department of Surgery and chief of cardiothoracic surgery. He was one of the first to do robotic heart and lung surgery within Summa Health. But he doesn’t find conversations about his accomplishments easy to discuss.

He insists, “It really is about the incredible team that helps me.”

The more seamless the surgical team relationship is, the better the surgeon performs, the better the outcomes. Dr. Espinal believes his or any leader’s job is really about encouraging and inspiring the team that has been assembled to do the very best work that they can.

Dr. Espinal said he’s always wanted to be a surgeon. He decided to be a heart surgeon in sixth grade science class. “We had to draw a complex picture,” he explained. “You could choose the eye and trace the path of light through the eye, to the retina, to the brain. Or, you could go with the heart and show blood flow through the heart, the right ventricle, out to the lungs and back. I spent hours on it, and when it was all done, I thought it was kind of a masterpiece.”

It seems he made the right choice.

“I just love the ability to meet a patient with a problem, to be able to offer a life-changing solution. And then for them to be able to come back and do better,” Dr. Espinal said.

And in times when the patient’s condition is more advanced and surgery cannot help?

“I don't really meet any patient [in his specialty] that has a minor problem. [It matters] that I am able to answer their questions; to allay a lot of their fears, which oftentimes is of the unknown; to give them some semblance of calm so they will understand the situation on their own terms; and to gain their trust that I have a team who's going to do our very best. It is very, very gratifying to be able to bring that,” he said.

Muscle Memory

One should hope and expect a cardiothoracic surgeon to be confident in their work. But one should also know that that’s the least of what happens with seven years of training — especially when that training follows four years of class, lab and field work to obtain a Doctor of Medicine degree.  

There’s also muscle memory.

“You feel comfortable because you've done this many times before,” Dr. Espinal said. “All the years of college, medical school, residencies, then fellowship, let you know that you belong here. You’re well-trained to do the job. But being a surgeon to the best of your ability also requires you to be a whole person.”

That means having different interests, focusing on family and just living a life apart from the role of surgeon.

“You have to do a lot of things that make you a person. Because if you're just going in there as just a surgeon with only one area of expertise or one point of view, it's going to be harder to relate to your team. It's going to be harder to relate to your patients,” he said. “A happy surgeon does great work. And with all the stresses and strains, I think it's very, very important. So, I've always been very focused on making sure, despite all of the demands, to stay very close to my family.”

Dr. Espinal and his wife, Sue Espinal, M.D., an OB-GYN at Summa Health, have three adult children — one is a resident physician and the other two attend medical school.

The Espinals met by chance when they were both in residency. Recalled Dr. Eric Espinal, “I thought she was probably too pretty and too fancy for me, so I didn't even talk to her until later when we did a rotation on the critical care service together.

“We worked together for a month and got to know each other.”

After that rotation was over, they went out on one date and have been together ever since.

In many ways, NEOMED played a role in Dr. Espinal’s chance encounter with his then-future wife. Akron City Hospital — where the couple met — was part of the University’s clinical network.

“What I really, really liked about NEOMED is its collaboration with the affiliated hospitals,” he said. “Having these community hospitals, even though they had an academic flavor to them, was very attractive to me because I knew I wanted to work as someone who's doing surgery every day.”

Even though he knew as early as grade school that he wanted to be a heart surgeon, it wasn’t until he met Zouhair Yassine, M.D., the founding faculty member of the Department of Anatomy at NEOMED, that Dr. Espinal began to understand what success as surgeon could look like.

“He was very much a gentleman. And that kind of inspired me. When times were getting tough, you knew Dr. Yassine would get you through it,” he said.

Doctor Do Good

Dr. Yassine’s conviction that doctors had to be part of the social fabric of their community is evident in Dr. Espinal’s work.

During the early days of COVID-19, no one really knew what was going on. Resources like masks were limited. So, Dr. Espinal and his team accrued the discarded wrap from sterilized surgical trays because of its ultra-filtration capability and began making masks of it.

“We made masks with sewing machines at my house and at volunteer departments here in the hospital,” noted Dr. Espinal.

“Then, I saw an article in the New England Journal of Medicine from a physician in Taiwan who designed a clear plastic box to place over a patient’s head and protect health care workers during intubation. So, I thought, let's mitigate potential contamination during intubation as we’re really exposing others to the airways of folks who have COVID,” he recalled.

Dr. Espinal found a few companies that were able to make the clear “intubation excavation” boxes. With his kids, he began distributing them (about 50) around Northeast Ohio and Pittsburgh.

The cost for the boxes was covered by the businesses, Dr. Espinal, his friends and colleagues.

“It was hard to deliver them because everybody was on lockdown and you couldn't go into a hospital. So, we literally just dropped them off at just about all the hospitals in Northeast Ohio, which then redistributed them,” Dr. Espinal said.

At times it was chaotic. “Driving around in an SUV with big boxes in the back. Family members, businesses and other volunteers working together to help in every way possible. It was just something we could do quickly as members of the Northeast Ohio community,” he said. “It hadn't been done before, and there was no proof, there was no science. There was just a single anecdotal article from the New England Journal of Medicine. And then we had another 50 made. We called the governor's [of Ohio] office and said a lot of hospitals need them across the state.  We loaded them on a U-Haul truck, then my daughter and I drove them down to the Ohio National Guard Armory in Columbus and assembled them in this giant warehouse from which they were distributed all over.”

With boxes delivered to different places, pandemic-imposed barriers to communication and lack of consistent feedback, Dr. Espinal, the numbers guy, doesn’t have hard data on use of the device, but is sure the effort was worth it.

His message is simple: Do something to help someone.