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Coronary Care Unit
This six-room intensive care unit is fully equipped with state of the art bedside non-invasive and invasive patient monitoring capabilities. The central monitoring station has continuous arrhythmia recordings of each patient, with a 24-hour recall capacity. All patients admitted to the unit are under the direct supervision of a full time cardiologist. The cardiology faculty rotates on monthly basis supervising the clinical care in the unit. All invasive procedures e.g. balloon catheter insertion, temporary pacemaker placement, pericardiocentesis etc. are directly supervised by the attending cardiologist.
Cardiac Clinics
The division operates two half day Cardiology Clinics at the King-Drew Medical Center. These clinics provide ambulatory continuity of care to all cardiac patients seen at the facility. New consults and referrals are also seen and if needed are followed up in these clinics. Two Cardiologists supervise both clinics and all patients are seen by one of the two attendings. In addition there is a half-day Preoperative Cardiology Clinic every week. This clinic is also staffed by a Cardiology attending. Cardiology division operates another weekly cardiology clinic at the Hubert H. Humphrey Comprehensive Health Center on Wednesday afternoons.
Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory
The cardiac catheterization lab is equipped with a biplane digital angiography setup. It has a state of the art hemodynamic monitoring system with capabilities for electrophysiologic recordings. An attending cardiologist and the cardiology fellow perform all diagnostic cardiac catheterizations. The cardiologists independently implant permanent pacemakers in this laboratory.
Echocardiography Laboratory
All inpatient and outpatient echocardiograms, in adult patients at the KDMC, are performed in this laboratory. The laboratory does Trans-thoracic M-mode and 2-D echo- Doppler studies routinely to assess cardiac function. Trans-esophageal echocardiograms are performed on selective cases by the cardiology attending staff. The director of the Echo lab interprets all echocardiograms.
Heart Station
This noninvasive laboratory is responsible for performing and reporting electrocardiograms on adult inpatient and outpatients at the KDMC. All tracings are interpreted by an attending cardiologist and filed in the recording system at the Heart Station. The laboratory performs 24-hour Holters, scans them and the attending cardiologist interprets and reports the results. Stress laboratory, which performs exercise testing, is also a component of the Heart Station. This lab conducts Treadmill Exercise tests with or without radionuclide stress testing. Pharmacologic stress testing is also performed on patients unable to do dynamic exercise. Stress echocardiography is jointly collaborated between Stress Lab and the Echo Lab.
Cardiac Consult Service
The Cardiology division provides cardiac consultations to all areas of clinical care in the hospital. The attending cardiologist, on the consult service, sees all consultations. Consultation team consists of one faculty, one fellow, one or two residents and the rotating medical or PA students. Routine inpatient consults are seen within 24 hours and are discussed in the daily consult rounds conducted in the afternoons. Most consults received before noon are responded by the same day. Emergency consults are handled individually on an urgent basis. |
