Right-sided Heart Catheterizations Being Performed
In Interventional Radiology and Vascular Laboratory
Cardiologists with Ohio Heart and Vascular Center are now performing low risk, right-sided heart catheterizations in the Interventional and Vascular Radiology Department at Clinton Memorial Hospital.
News of this new service being added was announced previously in Choo on this and the CMH Vision and was given front page coverage in the August 29 Wilmington News-Journal:
http://pages.wnewsj.com/Pdf/index/30348/564810
Cardiac catheterization is the common name for a group of diagnostic tests used to obtain information about the heart and/or its blood vessels. A right-sided heart catheterization measures the various pressures in the heart and can help determine medications that patients need to be placed on to manage their heart disease.
"We are pleased to be able to start offering this service in Wilmington," said Dr. Joe Choo, the medical director of the new service and one of three Ohio Heart physicians who is performing the procedures. The others are Dr. Santosh Menon and Dr. Greg Egnazyck.
During a right-sided heart catheterization, a cardiologist inserts a long, flexible tube (called a catheter) into a blood vessel (usually in either the arm or groin). The tube is inserted into the vessel through a very small incision made by the physician after the area is numbed with medication. The tube is then directed to the heart for purposes of measuring the pressures within the heart, as well as the cardiac output (the amount of blood that flows through the lungs), determining the oxygen content of blood in the heart chambers, and evaluating the structural components of the heart.
Dr. Choo said the primary reason for conducting a cardiac catheterization is to diagnose and manage persons known or suspected to have heart disease, a frequently fatal condition that leads to 1.5 million heart attacks annually in the United States. Symptoms and diagnoses that may lead to performing this procedure include:
·chest pain, characterized by prolonged heavy pressure or a
squeezing pain,
·abnormal treadmill stress test,
·myocardial infarction, also known as a heart attack,
·congenital heart defects, or heart problems that originated from birth,
·a diagnosis of valvular-heart disease,
·or a need to measure the heart muscle's ability to pump blood
The lab where this new cardiac service is being performed was the location of CMH's low risk heart catheterization laboratory from September of 2004 until December of 2008.
CMH converted the lab to the Interventional Radiology and Vascular Surgery Laboratory and it has averaged about 800 procedures per year since 2008.
The Ohio Heart and Vascular Center is also offering expanded cardiovascular services to the area with the opening of a heart failure clinic in its Wilmington office--Suite 300 of the CMH Professional Building, 630 W. Main St., next to Clinton Memorial Hospital.
