What are your plans for enhancing UI cardiology services?

We at UI Heart and Vascular Center are very focused on improving our relationships with cardiology colleagues around the state. In fact, we have a new plan that allows us to continue providing outstanding cardiology care while promoting more consistent staffing at our outreach sites and improving communications with referring physicians. We are also recruiting an outstanding leader for our Heart Failure and Transplant Service. This person will be a vital addition to our staff, in part because we are the only hospital in Iowa that can deliver advanced heart failure therapies such as heart transplant and ventricular assist devices (artificial hearts). We are also recruiting new and highly qualified arrhythmia (irregular heart beat) specialists.

What are the most promising new technologies in cardiology?

UI Heart and Vascular Center and Vascular Care has a great track record of translating scientific advances into clinical therapies that prolong and improve the lives of Iowans with heart disease. Some of the promising “technologies” include:

• New drugs for slowing or preventing the progression of coronary artery and non-coronary artery vascular disease
• Ventricular assist devices
• Implantable pacemakers and defibrillators to improve heart function in selected heart failure patients
• Life-saving “shocking” pacemakers that rescue patients from sudden cardiac death
• Catheter-based repairs of atrial septal heart defects that allow patients to be cured without surgery
• Drug-eluting stents for coronary artery disease that keep blocked heart arteries open longer to reduce chest pain