MOUNT VERNON — Many community members and special guests attended Sunday’s open house for the newly renovated and expanded Center for Cardiovascular Care at Knox Community Hospital.
The showpiece of the center is the new cardiac catheterization lab with state-of-the-art digital imaging equipment with a wide screen and futuristic control center. The x-ray/imaging machine is the only one in Central Ohio with two arms — one for heart scans, one for peripheral vascular scans.
“We’ll take pictures of any artery in the body that ties into the heart,” Steve Hack, director of cardiovascular services told the News. “We do the whole cardiovascular system as far as imaging goes. It’s not just heart it’s total hemodynamics (blood circulation).”
The old lab is still functional and that means wait time is reduced and emergency patients can be treated even if a scheduled procedure is in progress. Nurses who work in the unit have been trained specifically for the cardiac cath lab. There are x-ray technologists, registered cardiovascular invasive specialists, cardiologists, vascular surgeon Dr. Stephen Vincent and four board-certified interventional cardiologists: J. Pala, Barry George, Cindy Baker and Palal Attar.
“We typically have two interventional cardiologists here on any given day,” said Hack. “And we provide 24/7 emergency coverage. Any time of the day that somebody is having a heart attack, they can rest assured that we do have a physician on call and staff on call. Our response time is 30 minutes.
“We like to say, ‘Time is muscle’ so in the shortest amount of time you can get that artery opened back up. The more muscle that’s conserved, the less chance of a patient having a bad outcome from that heart attack.”
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