SVMC cardiology

 

 

STRIVING TO IMPROVE YOUR LIFE ONE BEAT AT A TIME

You get one life and you get one heart. The board-certified cardiologists and associated practitioners at SVMC Cardiology are committed to helping you make the most of both.

Our patient-centered approach to care and personalized care plans maximize your quality of life while delivering the treatment you need when you need it.

Creating the appropriate treatment plan for your condition begins with a cardiac consultation. Your consultation is a chance for you to share your health history and current concerns with your cardiologist. All necessary exams and tests are conducted on-site by your cardiac care team. The results are shared and discussed directly with you so that you fully understand your condition, treatment options, associated risks, and potential lifestyle changes.

After a heart episode or surgery, there’s nothing our cardiac team and you want more than for you to just get back on your feet and live the life you want. That’s why we begin your rehabilitation program before you even leave the hospital. Through a combination of education and exercise, your personalized program will help you build strength and reduce your risk factors. Using the full range of cardio equipment in our Cardiac Rehab Center and under the watchful eye of our rehab team, you’ll improve your heart’s strength and capacity and get closer to resuming a full and active lifestyle. For more information about Cardiac Rehabilitation, click here.

In order to understand how well your heart is or isn’t functioning, an echocardiogram may be performed. This non-invasive procedure uses sound waves to produce images of your heart. Both of SVMC’s cardiologists are board certified in echocardiography and able to observe how your heart is pumping and identify any abnormalities in the heart muscle or valves. An echocardiogram allows our team to make the most informed and appropriate recommendations for the next steps in your care.

If a standard echocardiogram does not provide a clear image of your heart, your SVMC care team may recommend a transesophageal echocardiogram or TEE. Performed at the hospital, this procedure involves inserting a flexible tube containing a transducer down your throat and into your esophagus. From this closer vantage point, the transducer then uses sound waves to create more detailed images of your heart and allows for better diagnosis.

Before we treat your heart, we need understand how it’s performing. At SVMC we offer a number of non-invasive stress tests that can quickly and easily reveal a number of things including: how well your heart works during increasing levels of activity; how certain medications are impacting blood flow; the effectiveness of procedures done to improve heart performance; and more.

If you have risk factors for heart disease, calcium scoring may may help you learn more about whether you are actually at risk. The non-invasive test uses high-speed CT imaging technology to measure the hardening of the heart’s arteries, a leading indicator of heart disease and heart attacks. Visit the calcium scoring page for complete details. 

A pacemaker is one of the most effective ways to ensure a heart maintains a steady, healthy beat. The SVMC cardiac team is exceptionally skilled and experienced at both pacemaker implantation and monitoring. Considered a minor surgery, implantation takes place at the hospital with most patients returning to normal activity (and a more steadily beating heart) within a few days. Like all medical equipment, pacemakers need a little TLC every now and then. At SVMC our cardiac team can perform routine monitoring, both remotely and in the office, and reprogramming as needed.

One of the most common cardiac diagnostic tools, an EKG is a painless way to check for problems with the electrical activity of your heart. The EKG translates and records your heart’s electrical activity over a period of time and translates it into waves. Your SVMC care provider can use printouts of the waves to detect any patterns that might point to a specific condition and put together a treatment plan that meets your specific needs.

Should your SVMC cardiac care provider want to monitor your heart over a longer period of time than is practical for a standard EKG, you may be given a Holter or event monitor. Worn outside the body and completely painless, monitors are helpful in detecting abnormalities that only happen occasionally and can help your doctor link any abnormalities to specific activities or events in your day.

Carotid ultrasound
At SVMC our goal is to treat your health issues before they become problems. Using our sophisticated carotid ultrasound test, your cardiac care provider can detect blockages in your neck arteries that could lead to a stroke or indicate problems in other parts or your circulatory system.

Education
Because understanding what causes heart problems is essential to resolving them, we offer a variety of educational resources to patients and their families.  Workshops are offered on an ongoing basis throughout the Dartmouth-Hitchcock network, and condition-specific literature is available in our offices. 

SVMC Cardiac Rehab

SVMC Pulmonology

American Heart Association 

Go Red for Women 

American College of Cardiology 

140 Hospital Drive, Suite 211, Bennington, VT 05201
Phone: (802) 442-0800
Fax: (833) 343-1597

Hours:
Monday – Friday:  8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Directions: 
For directions to SVMC Cardiology, click here. 

Parking:
For appointments at SVMC Cardiology, park in parking area P3 or P5.

    related articles

    How Breast Density Affects You
    Anonym
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    How Breast Density Affects You

    In celebration of Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we are sharing important information you should know about breast density. We are required to include information identifying your breast tissue density in your mammogram report. Just like your blood pressure and your body weight, breast density is an important thing for women to know. Here’s why:

    The Basics

    • Breasts are made up of four different parts: milk glands, milk ducts, connective tissue, and fat. Breast that contain a lot of fat are penetrable or light. They are easy to see through during a mammogram. Fibrous connective tissue is dense. Women with more connective tissue are said to have dense breasts. 
    • Dense breast tissue is completely normal and not a concern in and of itself. And there are not many behavioral causes, apart from some forms of hormone therapy, which does increase breast density. Dense breasts are inherited, mostly. Although Asian women are more likely to have dense breasts, breast density affects women of all races.
    • Breast density does decrease with age. More than half of women under age 50 have dense breasts, while only 40 percent of women in their 50s and only 25 percent 60 and older do. 
    • You might guess if your breasts are firm that they are dense. But that is not always the case. Breast density cannot be detected by how your breasts look or feel. It is not linked to firmness or size. The only way to tell if you have dense breasts is by having a mammogram. At the same time your radiologist looks for abnormal areas, he or she will also evaluate breast density.
    • Your radiologist will assign density to your breasts. The density descriptions were created by the American College of Radiology as a part of their Breast Imaging Reporting and Data System. There are four types: least dense, scattered, more dense, and densest.

    Women who have dense breasts are at a slightly higher risk of developing breast cancer.
    More than half of all women who develop breast cancer have no additional risk factors other than being female and aging; however, dense breast tissue can increase your risk of getting breast cancer. As density increases, risk increases. Women with the densest breasts have a risk for breast cancer that is 4- to 6-times higher than that of women with the least dense breasts.

    In addition, the character of dense breast tissue makes breast cancer harder to find.
    On a mammography reading, fat appears almost black. Fibrous tissue shows up white. One of the main problems with high breast density is that cancer also appears white. So, if a woman has a lot of fibrous tissue, the radiologist reading the test may find it difficult to detect cancer.

    Knowing your risk of breast cancer, including breast density, can help you make good decisions regarding prevention and screening.
    For most women, no additional screening will be recommended. Depending on your age, other risks, and your breast density, your provider may recommend an additional screening, like ultrasound or MRI. While combining screening methods does increase the likelihood of finding cancers, it also increases the number of false positives, including perhaps unnecessary biopsies. That’s why it is wise to consider additional testing with your provider.

    The website densebreast-info.org is an excellent resource for answers to more common breast density questions and helpful screening images that make it easy to see the differences between breasts of different densities.

    Dr. James Keenan is a radiologist with Radiology Associates of Bennington. The group provides radiology services to Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington.

    Print
    11336
    Tags: breast cancer breast cancer awareness month breast density

    Theme picker

    Theme picker

    MORE NEWS

    Theme picker

    VIEW ALL

    Our Services

    PARTNERSHIP IS POWERFUL MEDICINE

    A commitment to excellence and a patient-centered approach sets Southwestern Vermont Health Care apart.

     Cancer Care
     Orthopedics
     Emergency
     Maternity
     Primary Care
     ExpressCare
     Cardiology
     Rehab & Residential Care
    View All Services

    Theme picker

    Theme picker

    Theme picker

    VIEW ALL