Open Heart Surgery/Angioplasty

The need for open-heart surgery in East Polk and Highlands Counties has been clearly demonstrated and we are anxious to provide this vital service.

We are in the process of building two new large operating rooms which will connect to our Ambulatory Surgery & Diagnostic Center. We anticipate that they will be completed in July 2005 and we will begin doing open heart surgery at that time.

Prior to starting open-heart surgery we are scheduled to begin angioplasty in March 2005. Angioplasty is the process where an interventional cardiologist runs a catheter through the patient’s artery and a balloon is inflated to expand and open a blockage within the artery. It is often used in combination with “stents,” small metal scaffolds used to keep the expanded artery open.

Several experienced interventional cardiology physicians from the Watson Clinic are already on our Medical Staff. They are assisting with the training of our staff and will be doing the angioplasties in March. Dr. Kevin Browne is the Medical Director for this new service. These specialists have a two-year contract with the hospital to do angioplasties and following that time the cardiologists, already on our staff, may recruit other interventional cardiologists to provide this service as well.

Dr. Jack Messina, from the Watson Clinic, will be the Director of our Open Heart Surgery team. Joining him will be his colleagues Dr. Andy Sherman and Dr. Larry Sowka. This highly experienced team has already been involved with planning the two new operating rooms and helping educate our staff.

Dr. Messina’s team will also provide perfusionists, heart pump specialists, who oversee and operate the “heartlung machine” during the phase of open heart surgery when the heart is stopped. They will also provide Anesthesiologists, who are experienced in managing open-heart patients throughout surgery. Like the other interventional cardiologists, Drs. Messina, Sherman and Sowka are already on our Medical Staff.

In addition to the two new large operating rooms, built specifically to handle all of the sophisticated equipment, we are building a new 8-bed Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU). Specially trained critical care staff will prepare patients for surgery, recover patients immediately after surgery and continue to provide care and monitoring for patients until they are stabilized – usually 24-48 hour. The operating rooms and the new CVICU will have the very latest state of the art
equipment.

Other preparations are taking place to ensure the scheduled March and July start dates. This includes extensive training for our surgical and ICU patient care staff. Nurses and other crucial team members will be trained onsite under the direction of Dr. Messina, as well as offsite at facilities with existing open-heart programs. Cath Lab staff are receiving training under the direction of Dr. Browne and Cath Lab Director, Rob Roy, RN.

Additional plans include the opening of an Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation program, where post-bypass and post-angioplasty patients will receive continued care after discharge. Outpatient Cardiac Rehabilitation provides exercise therapy and assists patients with successfully making the lifestyle modifications necessary to prevent closure of bypass graphs or vessels opened by angioplasty and/or stents. The cardiac rehab program will complete the comprehensive continuum of cardiovascular services at Winter Haven Hospital, providing the citizens of Eastern Polk County a fullservice cardiac hospital locally.

We are fortunate to have the Watson Clinic Team of highly qualified, highly experienced specialty physicians join our great team of cardiologists, who have served the community so effectively for years, including:

Dr. Karan Bhatia
Dr. K.S. Chandrasekhar
Dr. Richard Giusti
Dr. Greg Gooden
Dr. Gary Johnson
Dr. Randall Kramer
Dr. Jose Vigoreaux, Jr.
Dr. EdgarWillard, III

It’s an exciting time at Winter Haven Hospital, as we constantly seek to meet our Mission - To improve the health of the communities we serve by providing high quality, cost effective care and services. Working together, we know that we will provide the very best physicians, the very best staff, and the very best facilities, equipment and technology, to assure the very best services and care for the numerous people in the communities we serve.