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.

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    Important Information about Post-COVID Exercise
    Anonym
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    Important Information about Post-COVID Exercise

    Exercise is so important to our health and wellbeing. It prevents many serious and chronic conditions. It lifts our mood and even improves our immune response. That’s why health professionals have been eager to tell people to get more exercise. For those who have had COVID-19, though, physicians are advising caution.

    While there’s a lot we still don’t know about COVID-19, we do know that the virus can damage the heart, brain, lungs, and kidneys, even among previously healthy people who had mild illness.  For instance, myocarditis is an inflammation of the heart caused by a viral infection. The condition was present in 60 out of 100 former COVID patients in a recent cardiology study.  It can make vigorous activity more difficult and even deadly. Other heart issues, like arrhythmia, an abnormal heartbeat, can crop up. Similarly, blood clots are more common among people who have had COVID-19 and can be deadly if they reach the lungs.  The risks for these conditions increase with exercise.

    No strenuous exercise when you’re sick. In the past, doctors often tell people who are feeling ill to exercise, if they think it would make them feel better. That is not the case with COVID-19. No one with COVID symptoms or a positive COVID-19 test should exercise strenuously, even if they feel able. Instead, focus on rest, hydration, and good nutrition.

    Talk to your doctor. If you’ve had COVID-19, it’s very important to talk to your primary care provider before starting or returning to strenuous exercise, especially if you experienced chest pain, shortness of breath, or fatigue during your illness. Your doctor may recommend 7 days – 2 weeks before exercising. Your doctor may even recommend cardiac tests before making a recommendation about whether you should resume exercise.

    Everybody is different. Many factors affect the recommendations your doctor will make, including your fitness level before being infected, the severity of your COVID-19 case, the symptoms you had, and whether you continue to have any after effects.

    Take it slow.  You may have lost some of your capacity to exercise, because you have not been able to exercise for a time. Muscle strength, tone, and conditioning all decrease rapidly, even over as little as a week. This would be the case with any injury or other illness. Some active people will find it easier to resume exercise than others, but everyone should take it easy. Your doctor will likely recommend that you start with 50 percent or less of your pre-COVID exercise capacity.

    Listen to your body. This is not the time to push it. Instead, be mindful of what you are feeling as you exercise and stop if you experience any “red flag” symptoms. They include:

    • Chest pain or heart palpitations, a high heart rate not proportional to exertion level, or prolonged heart rate recovery
    • Nausea, headache, lightheadedness, or dizziness
    • Shortness of breath, difficulty catching breath, or abnormal rapid breathing
    • Excessive level of fatigue, swelling in the extremities, passing out, tunnel vision, or loss of vision.

    If any of these symptoms arise and don’t immediately resolve, consult your doctor. If they do resolve, rest for at least 24 hours. Start back up at a less intense level. Even those who experience no symptoms should take a slow, stepwise approach.

    Be patient. Your recovery could be slow. It’s far safer to increase your activity slowly, rather than rush to reach your previous fitness level.

    Dr. Scott Rogge is a cardiologist with SVMC Cardiology in Bennington, VT. 

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    Tags: exercise COVID-19

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