Transforming Heart Care
NorthShore Cardiovascular Institute’s renowned cardiovascular surgeon Hyde Russell, MD, and advanced heart failure specialist and expert cardiologist Robert Gordon, MD, are leading collaborative efforts in a new Advanced Heart Failure Service, offering fresh hope and vital treatment options for even the most severe heart failure patients.
Leading-edge Heart Failure Treatment Options
Innovative treatments include our Joint Commission-certified left ventricular assist device (LVAD) program. This literally life-saving mechanical pump is implanted in patients with end-stage heart failure, attached to the heart’s left ventricle and powered by an external battery pack. For patients who have exhausted other conventional interventions including stents, pacemakers and open heart surgery, LVAD can extend longevity and enhance quality of life, and in some cases serve as a bridge to heart transplantation.
NorthShore partners with Loyola Medicine’s heart transplant program, participating in all interdisciplinary conferences for our potential transplant patients.
Life-saving Innovations, Optimal Results
NorthShore is one of only a handful of area institutions offering extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO)—providing both cardiac and respiratory support, temporarily allowing the patient’s heart and lungs to recover in acute situations, before and after surgery. A fully-trained, multidisciplinary cardiogenic shock team is in place at Evanston Hospital.
Our unique outpatient Heart Failure Clinic offers CardioMEMS, a permanently implantable pressure measurement system designed to wirelessly measure and monitor pulmonary artery pressure and heart rate. We are seeing benefits in patient outcomes and reducing readmission rates.
A dedicated advanced practice nurse, in seamless communication with both patients and their physicians, helps monitor patients’ status with automatic measurements from CardioMEMS, which can indicate changes and potential problems before symptoms arise.
Fellowship trained specialist Mark Metzl, MD, offers specialized ablations for heart failure patients designed to restore normal heart rhythms.
Pioneering Clinical Trials
NorthShore’s Cardiovascular Institute and heart failure management program participate in an array of promising clinical trials offering patients the latest treatment options. For heart failure patients with preserved ejection fraction two major trials designed to reduce left atrial pressure (LAP) are offered. Ted Feldman, MD, is the national Principal Investigator and Dr. Gordon is the local Principal Investigator for the device trial REDUCE LAP-HF I.
The PARAGON trial offers a drug successfully used to treat those with reduced ejection fraction as a new option for those with preserved ejection fraction, a condition for which there is currently no treatment.
In collaboration with partners at the University of Chicago, NorthShore is participating in a device trial testing an external vest worn by patients that measures fluid content in lungs and automatically reports daily statistics.
Exceptional Collaboration Puts Patients First
Real collaboration between cardiology and cardiac surgery is at the heart of this notable program offering personalized continuity of care. An enhanced in-patient heart failure service will debut in early 2017 at Evanston Hospital.
Contact us for more information about our advances in Heart Failure at (847) 86-HEART.
