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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    Understanding Breakthrough Cases
    Anonym
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    Understanding Breakthrough Cases

    I have been asked several times about breakthrough cases. Why do they happen? How often do they happen? What do these occurrences mean in regards to vaccine effectiveness?

    The term breakthrough case typically indicates when a fully vaccinated individual later gets the disease they were vaccinated against. Note that testing positive for the cause of the disease doesn’t necessarily mean one actually has the disease. The person may remain asymptomatic. For SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, we define a breakthrough case as anyone fully vaccinated who tests positive, regardless whether they have symptoms, as such information is useful to have the person isolate in order to prevent spread to someone else.

    First, let’s look at some data on the occurrence of breakthrough cases.

    • The Vermont Department of Health reports that there are over 206,000 fully vaccinated Vermonters. Of these individuals, approximately 125 subsequently tested positive for COVID-19. Compare that with the more than 10,000 Vermonters who have tested positive for COVID-19 over the past 90 days.
    • Similarly, 90 million people in the United States are vaccinated. Among them, 5,800 have tested positive for COVID-19. Meanwhile, more than 7 million people in the U.S. have tested positive for COVID-19 just in the past 90 days.
    • As you might have suspected, your chances of testing positive for COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated are extremely low. Only 0.008% of cases of COVID-19 occur in vaccinated individuals.
    • These numbers are completely in line with our expectations, meaning the vaccines are extremely effective at preventing you from getting COVID-19.

    Second,

    • Most of those who are vaccinated and develop COVID-19 have mild or no symptoms.
    • Importantly, they are also much less likely to spread the virus to others.

    Third, the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 matters.

    • If there is a high percentage of the population vaccinated, then the chances that a vaccinated individual will contract COVID-19 is negligible. However, the chances of an unvaccinated individual eventually getting COVID-19 is moderate.
    • If there is a low percentage of the population vaccinated, the chances of a vaccinated individual eventually getting COVID-19 is low, and the chances of an unvaccinated individual eventually getting COVID-19 is high.

    For instance, assume 50% of the population is vaccinated. In this situation, everyone encounters the virus frequently as they go about life and interacting with others.

    • If an individual is unvaccinated, they will quickly become infected, as they are encountering the virus many times per week and have no protection.
    • If an individual is vaccinated, they may still eventually become infected, as they are bumping into it many times per week and at some point, they succumb. About 90 – 95% of the time, the vaccine wins, but 5 – 10% of the time, the virus wins.)
    • In other words, the lower the percentage of the population vaccinated, the more frequent one encounters the virus, and the greater the likelihood that even a vaccinated individual will eventually get the virus.

    However, let’s look at where we want to be as a society, a situation in which 75% or more of the population is vaccinated. Now everyone encounters the virus far less frequently.

    • If an individual is unvaccinated, they are still likely to become infected over time, as even though they are encountering the virus only a few times per month, they have no protection.
    • If an individual is vaccinated, they are extremely unlikely to ever become infected, have good protection against those few times they happen to run into the virus.

    It all boils down to the simple understanding that the higher the percentage of the population vaccinated, the less frequent the chance of encountering the virus.  This makes it is extremely unlikely that a vaccinated individual will ever get the virus, while the unvaccinated person still has a real chance of becoming ill.

    Visit the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s website to learn more about the small possibility of COVID-19 illness after vaccination.

    Trey Dobson, MD, is an emergency medicine physician, the chief medical officer at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, and the medical director of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Putnam Physicians.

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    Tags: vaccine COVID-19 breakthrough cases

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