When it comes to treating a heart attack every minute saves heart muscle. These are the types of things you hear when you tour our new state-of-the-art cath lab room at Providence Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. The new room opened its doors for its first heart stent procedure on Friday, April 15, commencing a new level of capability and solidifying Memorial as the destination in Sonoma County for the best cardiovascular, interventional radiology and vascular care.
When they are not treating emergencies the cath (catheterization) lab care teams use these special hospital rooms to perform minimally invasive tests and procedures to diagnose and treat cardiac and vascular conditions. They also see and treat dialysis, oncology, and trauma patients. The procedures performed in a cath lab involve making tiny punctures through the skin, into blood vessels and inserting flexible tubes, called catheters, which can be use instead of surgery, to access the heart and blood vessels throughout the body. Procedures include the insertion of stents, pacemakers, TAVRs (transcatheter aortic valve replacement), mitral clips, TMVRs (transcatheter mitral valve replacement), and feeding tubes. They also perform embolizations, fistulagrams and many more procedures.
Memorial’s new cath lab room boasts technically advanced imaging equipment used to see the arteries and check how well blood is flowing to and from the heart and other areas of the body. The imaging equipment includes a large monitor right next to the patient bed that shows the heart, arteries and other organs in high definition, enabling quick diagnosis and treatment. In addition, the imaging process requires lower doses of radiation, which is good for the patient and safer for the care team.
“In emergencies this new equipment lets us move faster and be more precise when every minute saved translates to less damage to heart muscle and other parts of the body, and a higher chance of full recovery for the patient. That’s a big deal for our care teams and certainly for our patients and their families,” added Wendy. It also helps that the cath lab is located right next to Memorial’s Emergency Room.
The new Memorial cath lab room, and the surrounding hallways and support rooms, took more than six years to get in place. Construction in hospitals is complex, requires a long list of permits and approvals, and, when it is done in a busy, functioning hospital, must be done in a way that minimizes disruption. The new room is the first of three to receive a complete overhaul. The other two rooms will be rebuilt in phases in the next 12-18 months, bringing them up to the same standards as the first room and completing the transformation of our Memorial cath labs.
“This is a very exciting accomplishment for Memorial and a huge boost in cardiovascular care for Sonoma County,” said Chuck Kassis, Memorial’s chief executive. “This is part of our work to achieve the highest standard and most advanced level of health care for our community and truly living our organization’s commitment to ‘health for a better world.”
“I want to recognize the vision and persistence of the many people it took to make this new cath lab a reality. On behalf of Providence and our patients, thank you!”
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