Medical News

September 10, 2004 — Baptist Heart Services, a division of Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., created Baptist Women?s Heart, a program devoted to assess women?s risk for heart disease, their number one killer. The new clinic is located in the Colonnades Medical Office Building, 501 Marshall Street, Jackson, Miss.

For five years, Baptist Heart Services has conducted Every Day Heart Day, a low-cost physician directed, definitive diagnostic heart screening program. Sixty-one percent of participants screened have been women, and sixty percent of those women were identified as having multiple risk factors for heart disease.

Statistics show one of every three American women is dying of heart disease. Through its Every Day Heart Day screening, Baptist developed a focused approach to assist women that are identified in the moderate to high-risk categories for heart disease.

Baptist Women’s Heart assists women in identifying and managing factors that put them at increased risk for heart disease, their number one killer. This affordable, comprehensive screening program includes three packages: an initial $25 heart screening; follow-up evaluation of screening results and physical exam for $45; a maintenance program with an individual healthy heart plan and follow-up office visit for $30.
For more information call (601) 292- 4263.

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PHILADELPHIA, PA October 7 2003 - Cardiology Consultants of Philadelphia, a leading medical group in Philadelphia that specializes in comprehensive cardiology care, announced today the launch of it’s newly redesigned website. Located at www.ccpdocs.com, the website features detailed office location information, physician schedules, an email mailing list and a news and updates database.

The website will allow users to have instant access to the latest news and updates from CCP including archived news. User registration is available to receive email alerts and important organizational announcements. The website was designed to provide a professional image with a solid database for content management. These systems are managed from a user-friendly control panel.

The staff at CCP numbers at over 100 personnel and includes 70 physicians, 15 registered nurses, 9 nuclear technicians and 6 Clinical Research Coordinator Nurses. CCP now has over 15 community offices in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, most of which have a cardiac imaging center. These locations include Philadelphia, Norristown, Lansdale, Drexel Hill and Springfield.

CCP is also affiliated with The Cardiovascular Institute of Philadelphia. Founded in 1998 to serve the Delaware Valley community, the CVI is a non-profit medical research foundation that works in partnership with regional hospitals, universities and private medical practices. The Institute is an independent community resource dedicated to advancing the science and practice of cardiovascular medicine.

Funded by individual donations, corporate contributions, charitable foundation and government grants, its resources will be made available for community health education programs, and to qualified researchers whose application grants are scientifically valid and in keeping with the mission. The Institute’s website is located at http://www.cviphiladelphia.org/

CCP has a state of the art outpatient cardiac care center located at Hahnemann Hospital. The Cardiac Care Center is a high-quality, physician-owned, freestanding catheterization facility located on the 2nd floor of Hahnemann University Hospital’s Bobst Building at 230 North Broad Street in Philadelphia (the corner of Broad & Vine Streets).

A collaborative effort by a number of medial practices, the Center was formed to provide outpatient diagnostic cardiac catheterization services in a physician-office setting. The center’s website is located at http://www.cardiaccarecenter.org.

The website was redesigned by Sandaleo.com, a technology consulting firm providing custom digital solutions in the form of websites, custom software and marketing services. Sandaleo’s mission is to help its clients leverage the internet for business.

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August, 2003 — Our special research proves that majority of UTS Blood Pressure users regularly print out their tracking results or send them via e-mail to the doctor to get the cure directions and corrections. With new version of UTS Blood Pressure this process became easier and faster.

New feature enables you to create and send out clear and highly customizable blood pressure and pulse reports with two taps of stylus. You even haven’t to remember the date of the last report sent. The program automatically selects the new readings that were entered since last e-mail and inserts them into the new message.

The UTS Blood Pressure 1.4 are fully compatible with standard Palm Mail, iMessenger and any third party mail application which supports Palm OS data exchange features.

A free trial copy of UTS Blood Pressure 1.4 is available at
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Contact: Fred Yaeger
Phone: 914/423-7972
Pager: 914/445-0262

TRINITAS HOSPITAL TO PROVIDE EMERGENCY ANGIOPLASTIES
Emergency Angioplasties More Effective Than Standard Drugs In A Heart Attack

ELIZABETH, NJ August, 2003 — Trinitas Hospital to provide emergency angioplasty procedures (Percutaneous Transluminal Coronary Angioplasty - PTCA), giving heart attack victims a proven,lifesaving treatment option.

“The announcement of emergency Angioplasty procedures at Trinitas coincides with the Danish study published in the August 21st 2003 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine that found emergency angioplasties are more effective than standard drugs in a heart attack,” said Gary S. Horan, FACHE, President & Chief Executive Officer. “The study also found that an angioplasty center such as ours at Trinitas, can cut the risk of death and major complications by about 40%.”

Coronary angioplasty is a procedure used to stop or prevent heart attacks, and involves the insertion of a catheter carrying a balloon through an artery in the groin and into a blocked artery in the heart. The balloon is inflated in order to open the artery and restore blood flow.

?Our ability now to offer emergency angioplasty services to the people of eastern Union County reinforces Trinitas Hospital’s growing reputation for excellence in cardiovascular care,” said Horan, who added that “This development will ensure that area residents can receive emergency cardiac care right in their own backyard.”

Trinitas Hospital’s cardiac services are among the most comprehensive in the region, including a full-service cardiac facility as defined by the State of New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services, as well as facilities for the intensive nursing care of patients with cardiac disease. These include a cardiac care unit, intermediate coronary care unit, cardiac catheterization lab, full service emergency department and cardiac rehabilitation services. These facilities are all staffed by the area’s largest team of board-certified cardiologists, an experienced cardiovascular nursing staff, and specially-trained cardiac technicians.

“In New Jersey, there is a high incidence of heart disease because of the older population of the area,” said Arthur Millman, MD, Chief of Cardiovascular Disease at Trinitas. “With the addition of emergency angioplasty, Trinitas Hospital now offers the residents of New Jersey comprehensive cardiac care, administered locally, by highly-skilled cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons.”

Dr. Millman added “the high prevalence of heart disease is a top health concern for the greater Elizabeth community. The ethnically diverse population in Elizabeth and Eastern Union County is at a much higher risk for heart attack and cardiovascular disease, and Trinitas Hospital serves a large percentage of lower income residents who cannot go elsewhere for care.”

Mr. Horan commented, “Emergency angioplasty services mark a “very important first step” for Trinitas, which plans to further expand the range of its heart services with an application to provide full cardiac surgery services. Our ability to offer emergency angioplasty moves us forward in our mission of ensuring the highest level of quality health care for the people of eastern Union County.”

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February 22, 2004–Douglas Wolfe, M.D., a cardiologist with Cardiovascular Associates, has implanted the first fully digital pacemaker in Mississippi. He performed the procedure at Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss.

The Vitatron C-Series pacemaker helps individuals whose hearts beat too slowly support the needs of their circulatory systems. It features Digital Signal Processing that converts analog data into digital data for more precise data collection and faster data processing. Vitatron C-Series devices are designed to help physicians quickly and easily achieve an optimal pacing pattern for each patient.

Using an external programmer during patient follow-up sessions, clinicians can download extensive pacemaker diagnostic data in less than 18 seconds. After evaluating stored diagnostic information, the therapy advisor feature automatically points out areas for suggested physician review and offers programming recommendations. Device reprogramming can be completed in as few as two seconds.

For more information, contact the Baptist Health Line at 948-6262 or 1-800-948-6262.

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June 4, 2004–For patients who suffer from peripheral vascular disease (PVD), Baptist Heart Services, a division of Baptist Medical Center in Jackson, Miss., has begun using a medical device called the PolarCath Peripheral Dilatation System. It is designed to reduce the number of patients who have to be re-treated for this potentially disabling disease.

Estimates indicate that nearly 12 million Americans suffer from PVD. This disease causes the blood vessels in the legs, abdomen, pelvis, arms or neck to become narrowed or blocked. The major cause of PVD is atherosclerosis ? a build-up of fat, calcium and other substances under the inner lining of the artery. This build-up narrows the artery and reduces blood flow. Poor blood flow to the muscles, bones, nerves and skin of the legs and feet can cause pain, restricted mobility, skin ulceration and eventually gangrene.

?Patients with PVD initially experience no symptoms,? Vascular Surgeon Dr. Charles O?Mara said. ?But pain often develops in the leg from the hip to the foot during exercise or even at rest. This disease can severely restrict a patient?s lifestyle and may lead to amputation.?

Minimally invasive treatments to open a partially blocked vessel include angioplasty and stenting. While these two treatments work well, each may cause an inflammatory response that leads to restenosis (reclogging of a previously opened vessel) resulting in the need for another angioplasty or stent. The PolarCath takes angioplasty to another level by incorporating the CryoPlasty procedure.

In CryoPlasty, a balloon is filled with a liquid nitrous oxide, which evaporates into a gas upon entering the balloon, causing the balloon to inflate and cool. This cooling is believed to prompt several physiological reactions that open up the artery while doing less damage than standard interventional therapies. The plaque cracks when it freezes, allowing for more uniform opening of the vessel. The cooling may also prompt apoptosis, which minimizes the growth of new tissue that may result in restenosis. Nine months after treatment with CryoPlasty, 85 percent of treated leg arteries remained open, according to interim results of a multi-center study sponsored by CryoVascular.

?This new feature of balloon angioplasty holds promise in providing more reliable and durable results after re-opening blocked arteries in the legs as well as in other areas of the body,? Dr. O?Mara stated.

For more information, call the Baptist Health Line at 1-800-948-6262 or 948-6262.

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November 11 2003–The economic impact of cardiovascular disease in the U.S. is enormous. Considered as a whole, the annual cost of treating Americans with CVD currently exceeds US$200 billion. This represents actual expenditures, and is the most spent on any single disease category. But the indirect cost of CVD is just as staggering?each year the morbidity and early mortality attributed to CVD represents a drain of over US$140 billion from the U.S. economy in the form of lost productivity. This is a huge burden borne by U.S. employers and reduces American competitiveness around the world.

With these amounts of resources at stake, any program to detect heart disease in its earlier (and less costly) stages stands to make an important contribution to both the health and the economy of the country. Fortunately, there is a growing body of medical evidence about the benefits of actively screening populations for CVD. In response to the need for sound advice and analysis on the issue of how hospitals and physicians can use screening programs to improve the quality and profitability of cardiovascular care while simultaneously controlling costs and reducing waste, HealthGroup West has published a new white paper. Free copies of ?A Business Case for Early Detection of Cardiovascular Disease: The Financial Impact of Current Trends in Population Screening Programs? are available upon request from HealthGroup West. The study provides cardiovascular leaders with a framework to evaluate the appropriateness of pursuing a variety of different screening strategies in their own cardiovascular programs.

According to Jeffrey Frazier, a principal at HealthGroup West, ?The pervasiveness of cardiovascular disease makes it a natural target for developing screening programs.? ?If screening programs can reduce the acute treatment costs and associated morbidity of CVD by just 10% over five years, a positive impact of over $350 billion would be realized by the overall economy. This is almost as much money as is being considered under some of the current Medicare prescription drug benefit proposals,? adds Frazier.

?Unavoidable demographic trends and technological advances dictate that there will be tremendous growth and competition in cardiovascular care for the foreseeable future,? says Kevin Curtis, also a principal at HealthGroup West, LLC. ?But now more than ever providers of cardiovascular care need to be able to demonstrate that their actions dramatically improve the health of their patients and actually save the country money in terms of increased worker productivity. There are many opportunities for hospitals and physicians to use screening programs to make this happen,? added Curtis.

HealthGroup West is expert in the growth and development of cardiology, cardiac surgery, electrophysiology, and vascular medicine services. With clients ranging from physician practices and community hospitals to major health systems, HealthGroup West is one of the most knowledgeable groups of experts in the country on the development of all types of specialized cardiovascular services. The cardiovascular specialists of HealthGroup West hold advanced degrees in Business Administration; Economics and Finance; Health Policy and Evaluative Clinical Sciences; Information Science, Law, and others.

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