Coronary Artery Disease
Coronary artery disease is the most common type of cardiac disease and the leading cause of death for both men and women in the United States. Allegheny General is a national leader in the diagnosis and treatment of heart disease, using the latest technologies and cardiac care strategies.Diagnosis
Allegheny General provides exceptional methods to examine the heart from without and within to pinpoint the cause and location of patients' coronary disease — a superior foundation for effective treatment. Featuring state-of-the-art nuclear stress testing, stress echocardiography, cardiac PET imaging, coronary angiography, cardiac MRI and cardiac catheterization, the hospital's cardiac imaging program provides physicians with every conceivable tool to accurately diagnose heart disease. |
Cardiac catheterization. Tony Farah, M.D., Director of the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory |
A cath lab team is available around the clock for emergent cases. Critical patients with acute myocardial infarction, such as those transported by LifeFlight are immediately sent to the cath lab upon arrival at Allegheny for assessment and treatment — a timesaving pathway that allows physicians to institute treatment sooner, thereby minimizing damage to the heart muscle and improving survival. Allegheny General is a benchmark hospital for the core measures initiatives related to acute MI, exceeding the national standards.
Medical treatment
Our physicians tailor pharmacologic management to the individual patient, using best-practice drug regimens and carefully selected new and cutting-edge agents. Novel therapies, such as enhanced external counterpulsation may be added to complement drug treatment. Allegheny's cardiologists offer a complete array of procedures, from the traditional to the novel:Balloon angioplasty and coronary stenting.
Allegheny interventional cardiologists are regional leaders in their experience and expertise in percutaneous coronary intervention.
Drug-eluting stents.
In some patients, the biological processes causing restenosis requires more sophisticated drug-coated or drug-eluting stents. Allegheny physicians employ these devices to deliver time-released pharmacologic agents via the stents to the area of the artery vulnerable to restenosis.
Distal protection devices.
Allegheny General cardiologists were among the early principal investigators in clinical trials of distal protection devices. These devices reduce the risk of heart attack among patients undergoing balloon angioplasty and stent placement to open blocked coronary arteries. The device protects patients from distal embolization, in which tiny blood clots and plaque debris break free and flow toward smaller vessels in the heart, potentially leading to heart attack. During this procedure, doctors inflate a balloon on the catheter's tip that temporarily blocks blood flow from the diseased artery into the heart's smaller vessels during the stenting procedure. After the stent has been placed, trapped blood or debris is vacuumed out through an export catheter before the balloon is deflated.
Adjunctive thrombolysis.
Allegheny has been at the forefront of applying anti-clotting medications to minimize the damage of acute myocardial infarction, offering patients drugs considered the industry standard as well as investigational medications.
Balloon valvuloplasty for aortic and mitral valve stenosis.
Allegheny physicians are considered among the nation's elite in using balloon-tipped catheters to repair and restore optimal blood flow in the aortic and mitral valves of the heart. In some patients with congenital disease or disease that develops later in life, balloon valvuloplasty offers a minimally invasive means to open these critical heart valves without the need for open-heart valve surgery.
Rotational and Directional Atherectomy.
These procedures attack stubborn plaques that are not treatable with traditional balloon angioplasty. Rotational and directional atherectomy are two different methods of reducing plaque size by either drilling or shaving the plaque. In both procedures a special protective shield placed around the area captures the debris and removes it from the artery via the catheter.
Surgical therapy
Our cardiac surgeons have performed over 35,000 open-heart operations during the past 50 years — more than those at any other Pennsylvania hospital.Allegheny General surgeons are among the most experienced in the United States in coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and handle the most complex, high-risk cases. One in particular, CABG for ischemic cardiomyopathy, is a special area of expertise for Allegheny cardiac surgeons. Additionally, Allegheny's surgeons are among the most experienced and technically skilled in offbypass coronary artery bypass surgery (OPCAB) — a technique involving the use of the standard sternotomy incision followed by placement of one or more bypass grafts on the beating heart. The advantages of OPCAB include shorter hospital stays, less blood transfusion and a reduction in some types of postoperative complications.
Allegheny surgeons also have consistently demonstrated the lowest mortality rates among hospitals in the region. Patients have around-the-clock access to doctors on site to help manage the critical post-operative care period. Allegheny patients also benefit from sophisticated nursing expertise that has developed while caring for a large, often critically ill patient population.
Cardiac surgeons at Allegheny General use a comprehensive coronary artery bypass program emphasizing detailed preoperative patient education, leading surgeons with highly experienced teams that focus on long-term results, patient care designed to bolster the recovery process and follow-up care that includes "house calls" by telephone and email, as well as the extensive services available through the hospital's lifestyle management services.
