WakeMed is an 804-bed private, not-for-profit health care system based in Raleigh, North Carolina. It operates two acute care hospitals (WakeMed Raleigh Campus and WakeMed Cary Hospital), two healthplexes (WakeMed North and WakeMed Apex), two skilled nursing facilities, a home health agency, three dedicated outpatient facilities, four collaborative outpatient rehabilitation programs located inside area YMCAs, and WakeMed Faculty Physicians, a multi-specialty physician practice. It is a leader in both Wake County and the state in developing innovative services to meet the needs of its community

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Making the transition from “the way it’s always been” to the lower-cost, higher-efficiency, better-care alternative

Why should an operating room be like a desktop computer?

A desktop computer can perform several functions because of its design. The installed software allows a user to run a word processor to draft reports, a mail service to communicate, a high-powered calculator to crunch numbers, and/or the Internet to research, read the news or just relax. Emerging hospital design concepts make it possible for hospital surgical s

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Implications for practice and what we need to know

As cath lab professionals, our practice is constantly becoming more complex and diverse. We are also engulfed in technology in the pursuit of improving quality of life for our patients. Why? The answer is sudden cardiac arrests (SCA), also referred as sudden cardiac death. About 325,000 SCA occur annually in the United States, of which 163,221 SCA take place out-of-hospitals.1 There are numerous contributors to SCA:2,8,10

• An unusually rapid heart rate of unknown cause that comes and goes, eve

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Developing partnerships with local EMS providers to decrease door-to-balloon times

Summary

The American College of Cardiology guidelines for “door-to-balloon” time identify evidenced-based practice as less than 90 minutes for patients experiencing a heart attack and “door to door-to-balloon” time as less than 120 minutes. Initial data collection revealed that our hospital was experiencing door to door-to-balloon times of up to 240 minutes with an average of 146 minutes. Analysis of the process showed that patients calling for em

Sameer Mehta, MD, FACC, MBA, is studying ST-elevation myocardial infarction interventions in his work with short door-to-balloon time primary PCI and the Single INdividual Community Experience REgistry for Primary PCI (SINCERE) database at 5 community hospitals in Miami, Florida, now over 365 patients. A past chief of interventional cardiology and director of the cardiovascular laboratory at Cedars Medical Center in Miami, as well as former President of the American Heart Association (Miami Dade Division), Dr. Mehta is a Voluntary Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of M

Pericardial effusion is the collection of fluid in the pericardial space around the heart. When the pressure in the pericardial space exceeds the pressure in the cardiac chambers, then cardiac function is impaired and the resultant hemodynamic crisis is known as cardiac tamponade. Echocardiography is critical in the evaluation of pericardial effusion and instrumental in determining the presence of cardiac tamponade. Echo-guided or echo-assisted pericardiocentesis is the treatment in most cases.1

The pericardium consists of two layers: the visceral pericardium, which follows the epicardial

This monthly column in Cath Lab Digest reviews important points of distinction in vascular imaging, from characteristics to techniques, to provide valuable and relevant information about this technology.

Dr. Kollmeyer is President and founding partner of DFW Vascular Group, a leading vascular surgery practice in North Texas. He has practiced at Methodist Dallas Medical Center for over 25 years, as well as serving patients at the Baylor Heart Hospital in Plano, Texas. Board-certified in both vascular surgery and general surgery, Dr. Kollmeyer is a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons.

It is my hope that the following story will help to guide you on a journey of self-discovery and growth. I would like to awaken your ability to see from our patients’ perspective and help you notice how an “old” way of speaking, combined along with the power of our body language, can add to our patients’ already traumatic experience.

Imagine how it could be different. Ask yourself, “What can I do to push the bar ever higher?”

You wake up with a busy day planned: work, meetings, kids and family. You are going about your day and suddenly you start experiencing some discomfort

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“Once in a while, when we are removing a sheath, the patient becomes sweaty, the pulse rate goes down and the BP goes down. The doctors say that this is a vasovagal response, but I thought it was the beginning of shock because the BP went down. I’m confused.”

— CVT student from Wisconsin.

A vasovagal reaction is nothing more than a fainting episode. It can sometimes be seen referred to as neurally mediated syncope. When you hear about someone who is squeamish of blood and then sees blood, what happens to them? They sometimes fall to the f

I am a health services manager with over 20 years experience in the fields of invasive and noninvasive cardiovascular services. I received my initial cardiovascular training in both invasive and noninvasive studies from the Army, and traditional education from Wayland Baptist University and Webster University. I served with the United States Army for 23 years until recently, and today, I work with the Kaiser Permanente team at Sunnyside Medical Center at Clackamas in Oregon, as manager of three departments that include three cardiovascular laboratories (with an additional two under constructio