If you have unexplained chest pains, shortness of breath or other heart-related problems, but your angiogram says your heart looks fine, new technology at Memorial Health’s Heart and Vascular Center may have the answer you need.
Angiograms are a useful tool for detecting narrow spots and blockages in your blood vessels, but Dr. Jagjit “Jags” Khosla, an interventional cardiologist at Memorial Health Heart and Vascular Center, says there are some spots it just can’t reach.
“There have been a lot of patients coming with chest pain, and they do get the angiogram, and the angiogram does not show any blockages, but they still continue to have chest pain,” he said. “Now, lately in the last 10 years we have been realizing that these patients might be having blockages not in those major vessels, but in those small branches that are coming out of those, which cannot be seen on normal angiograms.”
So, what does that mean for your heart?
“Imagine like, in this big city, all the major highways are open, but you have the small streets that are all backed up. So, you would still have congestion, but you won’t see anything on the highway,” Khosla said.
This is known as Coronary Microvascular Dysfunction, or CMD, and it can have dire consequences for the heart’s health. CMD can even lead to an increased risk of heart failure and major heart attacks.
That’s why medical professionals at Memorial Health’s Heart and Vascular Center are making these unseen blockages seen.
“So basically we use a special wire into those branches and what those pressure wires do is measure the pressure across them and kind of try to identify if there’s a resistance in those small vessels,” Khosla said. “So that way, that is the technology through which we identify it. It’s done immediately after the angiogram. The next step is to get that wire across and measure the pressures and all the information.”
The only other place in Oklahoma that offers this is Oklahoma City, so people in southwest Oklahoma will no longer have to travel over an hour to get a treatment option that works for them and their heart.
“So once we diagnose, depending on the type of disease it is, that might vary from beta blockers, calcium channel blockers,” Khosla said. “These are the medications that slow down the heart and vasodilate, cause dilatation of those small branches, so that there’s a better blood flow going through those. So, these are the ones that historically have benefited these patients.”
They can even continue to receive care close to home.
“So the recovery is pretty instant because it’s like an angiogram. So patients can even go home the same day but on more appropriate treatment and over the time they just need to follow up closely while we up titrate the medication doses, but the patient goes home the same day,” Khosla said.
With February being heart month, Dr. Khosla encourages people to listen to their heart and get checked out if they’re having any issues related to it.
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