Part of the five-year construction and renovation project at Norton Audubon Hospital has reached a significant milestone with the completion of a new tower. It opened in April and features 74 additional private patient rooms for intensive care, open heart and progressive cardiac care. Norton Healthcare is investing $125 million in the project, which focuses…
Norton Healthcare has established uniform protocols for the treatment of pulmonary embolism (PE). The move is intended to improve patient outcomes for the life-threatening condition that claims tens of thousands of lives each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Our goal was to create a systemwide approach with the same agreed-upon…
Norton Heart & Vascular Institute’s Peripheral Arterial Disease Supervised Exercise Therapy (SET) Program is a new program available for patients with symptomatic peripheral arterial disease. If you have a patient diagnosed with peripheral arterial disease (PAD), this program can be used after surgery, with your recommendation, to avoid further invasive treatment or as a means to…
A HEART MURMUR is the audible vibration of blood flow. Many children have murmurs; the types we hear most commonly vary depending on a child’s age. If we were to listen to the heart for someone’s entire childhood, we likely would hear a murmur in most children. Since only about 1 percent of children have…
No one watching Ethan Byler play on the swing set with his sister, Emily, would point to the toddler and say, “He had a heart transplant.” They wouldn’t know that Ethan was the first child in get a Berlin Heart. They’d never guess this external Benign chest pain inmechanical pump kept Ethan alive until he…
CHEST PAIN is very common in children. Fortunately, serious heart conditions are very rare but include pericarditis, myocarditis, cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, coronary artery abnormalities, aortic dissection and ingestions. Noncardiac causes of chest pain are seen most frequently and include costochondritis, nonspecific chest wall pain, slipping rib syndrome, trauma or muscle strain. Other noncardiac causes of chest…
The American Heart Association (AHA) calls tPA the “gold standard” for treating ischemic strokes. AHA guidelines for the early management of acute ischemic stroke call for administering tPA as quickly as possible. Emergency physician Jeff A. Spain, M.D., has seen firsthand what a difference tissue plasminogen activator (tPA) can make in the treatment of ischemic strokes….