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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    Watch for Vaccine Scams
    Administrator Account
    / Categories: WELLNESS, 2021

    Watch for Vaccine Scams

    If there is anything that the pandemic has proven, it’s this: Wherever there is anxiety, there is an opportunity for fraud. We saw it at the beginning of the pandemic, when fraudsters sold bogus facemasks and testing kits. As the pandemic continued, we heard news stories about scammers offering miracle cures or promising financial relief in exchange for personal information.

    And now, scammers have zeroed in on the vaccine. They offer doses for sale or the opportunity to skip ahead in the vaccine line. They could ask you to purchase something that doesn’t exist, like counterfeit vaccines. Others count on you to provide personal information that they use to  steal your identity. From there, they can change your account passwords or open lines of credit in your name. A third type of scam makes the information on your computer inaccessible to you unless you pay them a ransom.

    So far, there have been 357,557 reports of fraud and identity theft related to the pandemic. Victims report losing $341.77 million.

    How do you avoid becoming a victim? Here are the top five tips:

    1. As a general rule, use two-factor authentication on your most important online accounts and ensure you have an up-to-date security software with anti-phishing protection installed on your devices.
    2. Be wary of unsolicited communications of any kind, like early access to the vaccine, in exchange for a fee or personal information. Communications can come via e-mail, text message, or phone. The communications can appear legitimate. Scammers fake the e-mail addresses and links to websites in the emails they send. E-mail addresses may look like official federal/state government agencies, medical organizations, or health care professionals. Scammers fake the phone number they are calling from by changing the caller ID (It’s called spoofing.) to a number you trust. (Scammers have even spoofed SVMC phone numbers.) Scammers even lie about who they are when you talk to them on the phone by claiming to be someone with authority to help or harm you.
    3. These communications usually promise something you really, really want: think love, money, or a miracle cure. They might offer a way out of trouble that they say you have gotten into. I had a friend who fell for a phone scam where the scammer said that they were the local police and were going to arrest her unless she paid them everything in her checking account via gift cards. They got $3000 from her with no way for her to get it back. If you are offered something too good to be true or sudden bad news, like a major fine, slow down and think twice. (And if gift cards are involved, it’s a scam. Guaranteed.) If they are purporting to be official, hang up and reach out to the organization using their published number.
    4. Don’t click on links or download any attachments in e-mails or texts that come out of the blue from unknown sources, even if those sources seem to be people you could trust. If you get an e-mail link or attachment from someone, call them to see if they sent it to you.
    5. Seek out known and trusted official sources (like svhealthcare.org or healthvermont.gov) for up-to-date information and guidance about COVID-19 and the vaccine. If there is a cure or a medicine or a quicker way to get a vaccine, we’ll tell you about it!

    If you follow these five tips, you will be very well protected against scammers. Don’t let your anxiety or eagerness cloud your judgement. Instead, count on the sources of information you know and trust.

    Geoffrey Mazanec is Southwestern Vermont Health Care's Information Technology security engineer.

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    Tags: vaccine COVID-19 scams

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