Lake Health Heart and Vascular Center

Did you know that heart disease is the number one health problem in the US and in Lake County? That’s why Lake Health’s Heart and Vascular Center offers a comprehensive program for residents of Lake County and surrounding areas. From emergency intervention to diagnostics, treatment, and rehabilitation, we bring advanced cardiac services close to home.

What's more, in December 1997 Lake Health partnered with The Cleveland Clinic -- world renown for cardiac services - to establish the only cardiac surgery program between Cuyahoga County, Ohio and Erie, Pennsylvania.

The Heart and Vascular Center, in conjunction with The Cleveland Clinic Open Heart Surgery Program, is home to some of the best and brightest medical professionals. Professionals you can count on to give you sound advice, expert care, and the attention you and your family want.

Prevention

At the Heart and Vascular Center, our first goal is to help you avoid heart disease altogether. We host a number of community activities aimed at prevention like early intervention and education programs in the public schools, employment fitness testing and free community screenings.

We also developed the Women's Heart Initiative to teach women how to prevent heart disease and how to recognize when a heart attack is occurring, since the symptoms can be different for women than for men.

Early Diagnosis and Heart Attack Intervention

Tripoint and West Medical Centers are accredited Chest Pain Centers and Certified Primary Stroke Centers.

Close to 1.5 million Americans suffer a heart attack each year; 45% of those affect people under age 65. Thanks to Lake Health’s optimal diagnostics and emergency intervention procedures, we can treat the early signs of a heart attack.

Our diagnostic services include:

• Cardiac catheterization
• Echocardiography
• Electrocardiography
• Cardiac electrophysiology
• Stress testing
• Holter monitoring

Our emergency intervention techniques include:

• Rapid diagnostics
• Enzyme testing
• Clot-dissolving drugs
• State-of-the-art angioplasty

Treating Heart Disease

If you need treatment for heart disease, you can feel confident that Lake Health offers the latest lifesaving technology and procedures. These include:

• Balloon angioplasty
• Coronary artery bypass surgery
• Valve repair and replacement
• Pacemaker implants
• Minimally invasive surgery
• Minimally invasive vein harvesting
• Off-pump "beating heart" surgery
• Aortic aneurysm surgery
• Stent implants

Cardiac Electrophysiology

As part of the comprehensive cardiovascular treatment provided here at Lake Health, cardiac electrophysiology (EP) is both a diagnostic and an early intervention measure that can not only take an extremely accurate picture of the heart to diagnose arrhythmias, but also provide catheter-based treatments like ablation, pacemaker implants and defribrillator implants.

Getting on with Your Life

We help you adjust to living with heart disease through our three-phase cardiac rehabilitation program. The first segment takes place within days of your heart attack or surgery, while you’re still in the hospital. It focuses on education about heart disease and helps you come to terms with your diagnosis.

Phase two includes exercise while wearing a heart monitor to help assess the heart’s response to exertion. To help you make lifestyle changes that last forever, this phase also includes lectures on nutrition, cholesterol, and other cardiovascular topics. In phase three, you exercise on your own. You can do that at our rehab facility, at home, at the mall, or at a health club. Regardless of where you exercise, our staff is always available to offer guidance and answer questions.

We also offer a chapter of Mended Hearts, a national support group that helps patients and their families come to terms with their disease. Our chapter meets monthly, rotating between TriPoint Medical Center in Concord Township and West Medical Center in Willoughby.

Results

Our unique style of care - which combines compassion, communication and cardiac excellence - has made quite an impression on our patients. In 2009, HealthGrades, the leading independent health care ratings organization, named Lake Health best in Ohio for cardiac surgery and is among the top 5 percent in overall cardiac services and cardiac surgery in the nation. For at least five years in a row, Lake Health has achieved five star ratings in overall cardiac services, cardiac surgery, coronary bypass surgery, the treatment of heart attack, treatment of heart failure and treatment of stroke.

To view Lake Health cardiologists, click here , then choose "Cardiology" in the Search by Specialty option.

*Source: Solucient 2003, Thomson 2007