What Tests Are Available to Check My HeartTests to check your heart are done every time you go to your primary care physician
Cardiovascular specialists and the care teams that they work with all have different focus areas to treat heart disease. Any to look for a cardiologist who has an expert-level of experience treating and managing your particular heart problem.
To illustrate this point, the focus of this article will be on cardiovascular specialists and care teams that deal with coronary artery disease (CAD).
Your First Stop
No matter what aspect of heart disease you are facing, your primary care physician (PCP) should always be the first resource you turn to.
Your PCP can help you understand the basic breakdown and treatment approaches for your condition. At that point, they will help you make the decision as to whether a specialist should be consulted or not.
It’s possible to manage borderline signs of heart disease with the help of your PCP. However, if the condition have gone beyond the clinically manageable point, you need to be referred to a heart specialist.
CAD is the condition that needs to be monitored by cardiovascular specialists. There are several complications that can arise as you’re undergoing treatment for the various stages of the disease.
The next section of this article will give you an idea of what your complete care team might look like.
Constructing a CAD Care Team
After getting referred to a cardiologist, your PCP’s role changes. They become more of the care manager. Coordinating all of the different appointments and collecting the information from various sources to get a comprehensive picture of both your diagnosis and prognosis.
A PCP isn’t the only doctor involved in your care. Here are some of the various professionals that may handle different aspects of your CAD treatment:
Heart specialists have different skill sets they bring to different individual cases and treatment environments. One of these skills is cardiovascular consulting. What is it and how is it different from the everyday clinical obligations of a heart specialist? This article will aim to answer those questions.
Call for Consult
Cardiologists don’t always take over patient cases. Sometimes they are contacted by a primary care physician or interventional cardiologist to offer a second opinion or to discuss treatment protocols.
In a nutshell, that’s what cardiovascular consulting involves. These specialists work with other doctors and surgeons to select the best treatment approach for a particular patient. Cardiovascular consulting can take place in a hospital or in a clinical setting. Some consulting services are even part of a more extensive medical practice.
Cardiovascular consulting can also extend to rehabilitation after surgery. The doctors who work in rehabilitation facilities design customized rehabilitation plans to help patients regain strength and functionality as well as adjust to a heart healthy lifestyle.
Specialists who offer consulting services are very well-versed in internal medicine and cardiology. The use of combination of this knowledge as part of comprehensive cardiovascular consulting. They have an expert-level understanding of the circulatory system and its effects on the heart, brain, and lungs.
Your primary care physician and the other members of your cardiac care team will rely on the information provided by cardiovascular consulting to develop a treatment protocol for your heart condition.
A Constant among Variables
If you have a heart condition, it is likely that you will get different types of care from different specialists and medical professionals on your cardiac care team.
Several of the doctors involved may only take part in your care plan for very short time, but most likely your primary care physician and cardiologist will stay on as a constant part of coordinating and managing your ongoing care. Consulting a cardiologist is just the first step on a very long road to heart health.
If you think you might have a heart condition or you are already showing signs of a heart condition; schedule an appointment with your primary care physician to go over the next steps and possible treatment options. From there, you’ll most likely be referred to a cardiologist who will examine and identify the specifics of your condition.
Consulting plays a pivotal role in the fight against heart disease. Hopefully, what we learn through studying the heart will continue to save lives and maintain healthy hearts with new breakthroughs in cardiac treatment.
Dr. Seldon, a Heart Doctor and Cardiologist in New York City, offers same day appointments and all testing is done on site. Call us at (212) 367-8000.
Find Reliable Cardiology SpecialistsFinding reliable cardiology specialists is particularly important if you are being encouraged to join a cardiac rehabilitation program. These programs are customized with your continuing heart health in mind.
They offer:
Varicose veins are an unsightly problem for a lot of patients who have circulation problems. More than being unsightly; the veins can actually get inflamed and become very painful, especially if you are:
Laser vein removal has a good success rate among patients that need the treatment. However, just like a lot of other medical procedures, it doesn’t work 100% of the time for every patient. Luckily, that doesn’t mean you out of treatment options.
There are several approaches that were used long before laser vein removal was an option. If the newest version of the procedure doesn’t seem to be answer, talk to your cardiologist about the other treatments on the list.
Taking Invasive Measures
Laser vein removal is the preferred method to deal with patients who are at-risk for developing deep vein thrombosis. It’s important that they undergo treatment before blood clots begin to form throughout their vascular system.
Sometimes patients don’t respond well to the minimally invasive options, but there are other approaches a cardiologist can fall back on to make sure the risk factor is properly dealt with.
One of the oldest methods in the book comes from 1939. It’s called Scierotherapy. It involves injecting either a highly concentrated salt solution or specially formulated detergent directly into the vein. It may not appear to work right away, but over the next six weeks the vein will slowly disappear.
There are also four different types of surgical procedure that can be performed on varicose veins.
They are:
1. Ligation
2. Stripping
3. Ambulatory phlebectomy
4. Endoscopic vein surgery
For the most part, the surgeries are all outpatient procedures.
Each Procedure Explained
The decision on which procedure to perform will be based on the location of the vein to be treated and the effectiveness of the procedure in that location. Varicose veins typically start out in the legs, but they can also appear on the chest and abdomen.
Ligation is simply the act of tying off a vein at either side of the opening. Essentially, this redirects the blood flow to other areas of the body. By cutting off the blood supply to the vein, it will eventually collapse on its own.
Stripping the vein is simply removing segments of the varicose vein from the body through very small incisions. Ambulatory phlebectomy involves removing large sections of surface veins through relatively small incisions.
Endoscopic vein surgery is the breakthrough that led to laser vein removal. The surgeon uses a camera to see the inside of the vein and figure out which of the veins needs to be removed.
These methods are usually covered by most insurance plans because they are not being used for strictly cosmetic purposes. Approvals take time, but they are worth it.
Dr. Seldon, a Heart Doctor and Cardiologist in New York City, offers same day appointments and all testing is done on site. Call us at (212) 367-8000.
When looking for a heart specialist, reviews can help, but the best thing to look for is experience and relationship. You have to know that your doctor has the background and training to spot indicators of heart disease even when they’re hard to pinpoint. You also have to trust the diagnosis and treatment you receive. The best way to illustrate this balancing act is to apply it to a current situation.
The Value of Recognition
Female heart patients need an experienced heart specialist. That’s really true in all cases; whether the patient is male or female. The difference it makes here is that women present very differently with symptoms of heart disease or heart attack.
It was once thought that female patients had smaller hearts. This has since been disproved thanks to advancements in research and technology. It turns out that the only reason your blood vessels would be smaller is if you have a smaller heart. The blood supply to your heart should match its size so that the organ is sufficiently supported by the body.
If that’s true, why did researchers originally assumed women have smaller cardiac vessels?
The answer lies in what they didn’t know about women and heart attacks.
A Key Difference
Normally, you have a heart attack because your coronary arteries are blocked with calcified plaque. The blockage cuts off blood flow to the section of your heart. In women, things work a little differently.
Instead of experiencing a blockage; many female patients develop what’s called
Finding an affordable heart doctor in New York City is a little bit like finding a needle in a haystack. However, with the right guidance, you can find the resource that fits your case best. This article will give you some helpful tips on how to narrow down the right cardiologist for the job.
Get a Professional Opinion
Your primary care physician is a very good resource to use when selecting a cardiologist.
Why? Your doctor is already familiar with you as a patient; understands the specifics of your case, and the complexities surrounding your insurance coverage. They can take a comprehensive look at everything and give you a highly-recommended referral.
That referral may prove invaluable down the road. Insurance coverage can be something of a roadblock if you preselect an affordable heart doctor in New York City and they aren’t covered by your insurance provider.
By talking to your primary care physician first, they stay in the loop and you get a pre-approved heart specialist. That’s not to say that most cardiologists aren’t covered by insurance.
Most of your cardiac tests, procedures, and surgeries should be covered by an insurance company, but for many of those providers the covers depends on whether or not your chosen heart specialist is in a particular provider network.
Realistically, you can have any affordable heart doctor in New York City that you choose. You just may need to prepare yourself for what the medical bills will be if you make the choice that’s not covered by your insurance provider.
Conducting an Independent Search
It is possible that the cardiologist you were referred to isn’t the right fit for your case. As long as you have a referral and/or a legitimate reason to see a heart socialist, you can begin scheduling your own consultations with a prospective list of specialists.
If you choose to go this route there are few things you should know right away:
Selecting a cardiac clinic in New York City can feel overwhelming. The good news is you have the good fortune of being in a location that is on the forefront of the medical field. This cutting-edge prowess extends to cardiology. The first question to ask yourself is: what kind specialist do I need?
Exploring the many Facets of Cardiology
The choice of a cardiac clinic in New York City is as varied as the specialists themselves. If you start by thinking diagnostically, it will be easier to understand what you’re looking for and eliminate non-essential options from your list.
Do you need:
To find the best heart doctors in the city, you have to follow the specialty. There are many subcategories within cardiology, just like there are many conditions within heart disease. The key is to know the basics of how the specialty breaks down and then narrow your search from there.
How many kinds of heart specialist are there?
This is a bit of a trick question. There are a lot of areas of interest within cardiology, but the specialty itself breaks into two different focus areas:
1. Clinical cardiologist
2. Interventional cardiologist
Both of these specialists share the same basic knowledge of the heart, but an interventional cardiologist can perform invasive surgeries on the heart, whereas, a clinical cardiologist does a lot of the diagnostic leg work before and after surgery.
It’s not uncommon to start off and find the best heart doctors; clinically speaking and then transferring to an interventional cardiologist if necessary.
Regardless, of if you transfer or not, your clinical cardiologist will remain part of your cardiac care team, even if you are in the hospital. A clinical cardiologist can take the role of consultant in a hospital setting.
If clinical cardiologists aren’t allowed to perform surgeries on the heart, why did mine oversee a cardiac catheterization?
That’s a very good question and it’s one that can confuse heart patients at first.
To be clear, clinical cardiologists aren’t allowed to perform invasive surgeries on the heart, but they are trained to perform some basic internal procedures. This includes cardiac catheterization and diagnostic testing.
Once there is sufficient evidence to indicate a probable diagnosis, you may be referred to a specialist with condition-specific training or be sent to consult with a heart surgeon.
Sometimes it’s not a matter of where to find the best heart doctors, but allowing the heart doctors to send you to the best ones they know of to handle and manage a particular heart condition.
What if I have to find the best heart doctors by myself?
There are a couple of different ways to conduct an effective independent search for your own heart specialist:
1. Ask your primary care physician who the best cardiologist is who specializes in treating your condition.
2. Research the top specialists in the field that study and treat your specific problem.
3. Attend a consultation with a cardiologist in your area and ask who they would see if they had your condition.
Beware of bias and always make sure the heart specialist you choose is properly certified and recognized within the field.
Dr. Seldon, a Heart Doctor and Cardiologist in New York City, offers same day appointments and all testing is done on site. Call us at (212) 367-8000.
