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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    Variants vs. Vaccines
    Anonym
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    Variants vs. Vaccines

    As you are likely aware from media coverage and medical publications, we are at a stage of the pandemic where the rate of coronavirus mutations is inversely related to the rate of immunity in the population, largely achieved through vaccination efforts. On one side, we have a virus that keeps changing, as we would expect. On the other, there are vaccines that largely prevent the virus from infecting cells and having the chance to change. Understanding the virus’s capacity to adapt is a great way to reinforce the importance of vaccination. The faster and more completely we get a large percentage of the population vaccinated, the fewer mutations will occur that allow variants to emerge. Here’s why:

    Variants are viruses that have mutated from their original form to express new and different properties, typically consisting of a change in the outer protein structure. The mutations are chance occurrences due to errors in replication. In other words, the cells of a person infected by the virus (host cells) create millions of copies of the virus, and there are mistakes that occur when building the new virus copies.

    The mistakes make a virus with a protein that “looks” different. Its outer proteins are angled differently, or they are longer or shorter than those on the original version. These mistakes most often make the new virus not work well, so the virus does not infect cells or replicate in high numbers. Rarely, however, the mistake produces a virus with a structural advantage over the original form. This is the start of a new variant. 

    In a basic sense, there are two types of pressures that lead to mutations that allow the virus to proliferate at a rate greater than its predecessor. Sometimes these advantages lead to the emergence of a new dominant strain throughout a population.

    • The first one is the pressure to infect. A mutation occurs that allows the virus to more reliably enter a host cell. In other words, the outer protein structure has changed to better attach and go through a channel in the cell membrane. This type of mutation may be the predominant mechanism that allows certain strains to spread more easily.
    • The second is the pressure to evade. A mutation occurs that allows the virus to dodge the host immune system, a person’s own immune system fighting the virus. This type of mutation gives rise to strains that can make the person more sick and a vaccine less effective.

    Variants are expected, and vaccination reduces the number of variants.

    • When most people are vaccinated (including kids), the prevalence of the virus and the amount of viral replication is relatively low, leading to fewer total mutations and variants.
    • When most people are not vaccinated, the prevalence of the virus and the amount of viral replication is relatively high, leading to greater total mutations and variants that can keep us on the run for a long time.

    Beyond the obvious reasons to get vaccinated—like not getting sick, causing others to become sick, and the desire to shed our masks—vaccination of most everyone is needed to prevent variants from forming and allowing the population to safely return to unrestricted socialization. 

    Trey Dobson, MD, is chief medical officer as Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington.

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    Tags: COVID-19 vaccines variants

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