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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    Vaccine Info for Parents
    Anonym
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    Vaccine Info for Parents

    Amid wonderful vaccine progress—including national eligibility for everyone ages 16 and older and Pfizer announcing initial findings that their vaccine safe and effective in preventing illness in those 12 years to 15—parents now have  the choice to get their children vaccinated. While most are overjoyed with these developments, I have heard from a few who, despite being vaccinated themselves, are wary about the decision for their child.  They have appropriate questions about safety, necessity, and side effects, and I want to acknowledge and address these concerns.

    Dear parents, for as long as your child has been alive, their safety and wellbeing has been your foremost concern. You should absolutely want to understand risks and benefits of any choices you make regarding their health. Your child’s medical provider supports that decision-making process. We encourage you to ask questions and get the answers you need.

    Look to science-based sources. As you search for the answers to your questions, use credible science-based sources of information. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Vermont Department of Health, and the American Academy of Pediatrics are great sources. These highlight evidence-based information about the risks of contracting COVID-19, of which there are many. They are also provide the risks of vaccination, which are extremely rare. 

    Vaccination is not new. We have used vaccination, in one form or another, since the 1700s. Vaccines, certainly among the top five medical innovations of all time, have saved hundreds of millions of lives and have allowed the advancement of civilization. The methods used to create the COVID-19 vaccines have been in development for decades. There is no science-based reason to believe that the vaccines will cause any negative long-term effects.

    One of the myths that has surfaced in social media is that the vaccines affect fertility, a notion that is completely unfounded and not biologically plausible. Yet such sensational statements persist due to the panic and concern they initiate in the reader. Millions of adults and thousands of kids have received the vaccine without safety concerns and resulting in a profound protection against COVID-19.

    If there were problems with the vaccines, you would hear about them. The pause of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should provide confidence that the doctors and scientists are watching for even the slightest “less than one in a million” chance of side effects. Their responsiveness is a signal that safety is the priority.

    The risks of COVID-19 are high, for both individuals and the population as a whole. Although most children infected with COVID-19 have mild symptoms, we know children can have serious complications related to the immune response or heart and lung function. Even after what may be a few days of mild illness, they can develop symptoms that make it difficult to exercise, which could affect their long-term health and ability to participate in sports. They can also pass the virus to the adults in their lives, some of whom may be at high risk of serious complications from COVID-19.

    We need everyone to work together. If we are able to get 70 percent or more of our population vaccinated, we can largely put COVID-19 behind us. And we will not reach that all-important threshold without including children. With the majority of kids and adults vaccinated, COVID-19 will affect our lives to the same degree as the seasonal flu. That means you won’t have to wear a mask or avoid visits with family and friends.

    If we do not vaccinate our kids, the virus will persist in high numbers for years. Too may people will continue to get sick, require hospital care, and die. Viral mutations will continue, and we will need masking and distancing for years to come.

    Putting it all together. Vaccination against COVID-19 is by far the safest choice to protect the wellbeing of our children and for the entirety of society. I, too, am a parent. My two teenage boys are scheduled for vaccination next week. I hope yours will get vaccinated soon, too. Then our children may gather safely with one another, interacting without masks or the need to distance, and once again enjoy each other’s smiles and companionship, an element to life that we all desperately need to return.

    Trey Dobson, MD, is the chief medical officer of Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, VT. 

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    Tags: parents vaccine COVID-19

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