New cardiologist at Auburn Community Hospital excited with the construction of a catheterization lab at the hospital: Patients won’t have to travel to other hospitals for routine angiograms, heart catheterization and other cardiac services
By Chris Motola
Q: How recently did you join Auburn Community Hospital?
A: A little over a month ago, actually.
Q: What put Auburn on the map for you?
A: I grew up in New York state. I’m originally from the Hudson Valley area and went to medical school in Buffalo. So, even though I’ve been out of the state for 25 years or so, I’m pretty familiar with it. The possibility of staring a cath lab here was very compelling. The opportunity was brought to me by Dr. Dan Alexander who was a med school classmate of mine. He’d been trying to recruit me to Auburn for a couple years now. With the cath lab starting that just seemed like an interesting opportunity to bring that service to the community.
Q: Why did the hospital decide to go ahead with building its own catheterization lab?
A: So right now patients who need a heart catheterization are transferred to another hospital because we don’t have a facility. So there should be some construction going on over the next few months that will help us build a cath lab that will allow us to do these procedures here so that patients wouldn’t have to travel for routine angiograms and, hopefully in the future, even stents and things like that.
Q: How helpful is it for emergent situations?
A: Oftentimes cardiac care is urgent or an emergency, so the transport time can be harmful if it’s too long. So the goal is to be able to treat some emergencies here. So not only is convenience improved but patient outcomes and safety as well. There’s a phrase we have “time is muscle.” The faster you can get blocked arteries opened the better. When it’s an elective procedure the timing is not as important.
Q: What’s the timeline for the lab look like right now?
A: With construction like this there are often some delays, so I really can’t say right now.
Q: How big is your team?
A: Overall in cardiology right now we have five doctors and then a staff of nurses and ultrasound and nuclear techs who help with stress testing. For the cath lab there will be a doctor and three other people for a single procedure. One person scrubbed with the doctor, one person monitoring the patient, one person logging the procedure in the back for paperwork purposes. And we need enough staff to cover days off and vacations. I anticipate we’ll need around nine or 10 cath lab staff members.
Q: Which patients are generally the best candidates for catheterization?
A: Oftentimes it’s patients who have been having chest discomfort and have a stress test that turns out to be abnormal. That would be one way to end up with a heart catheterization. Another common way is for a patient to be having chest pain at home, come to the emergency and then found to have had a heart attack based on blood test results or an EKG. Those patients would need a heart catheterization.
Q: In the meantime, what does your practice look like?
A: Right now I’m seeing patients in the office, on call in the hospital, reading ultrasounds, stress tests. So the noninvasive parts of cardiology I’m still doing until the cath lab is open.
Q: What drew your interest to cardiology?
A: You do see with catheterization or stents people who are really suffering feel better very quickly when you open up the artery. So it’s very gratifying to be able to do a procedure that makes them feel better, prolongs their life. And in elective situations we can still improve quality of life so that people who are having trouble exerting themselves, who may even have trouble walking, we can help them be more active and have a better quality of life.
Q: What are some targets you’re hoping to hit in terms of patients scene and procedures done?
A: I don’t have any specific numbers. I think the most important thing is that we build the cath lab well, we do the procedures well, we do a good service. So however long that takes in terms of getting staff trained is how long it will take. To me the quality is more important than the numbers.
Lifelines
Name: Jayadeep S Varanasi, M.D.
Position: Cardiologist at Auburn Community Hospital
Career: Most recently served as medical director of cardiac catheterization lab at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, Greensboro, North Carolina
Hometown: Wappingers Falls
Education: SUNY Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences; residency in internal medicine, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; fellowship in cardiology at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; fellowship in intervention cardiology at University of Massachusetts
Affiliations: Auburn Community Hospital
Organizations: American College of Cardiology
Quote: “It is my good fortune to be in a profession that can be supremely gratifying. Seeing a patient quickly recover from a heart attack is rewarding. However, I especially enjoy working with patients actively to prevent cardiac disease and maintain good health.”
Family: Wife, two kids
Hobbies: Cycling, tennis