Chief of the cardiovascular division at Auburn Community discusses expanding cardiac services at the hospital to better serve local population
By Chris Motola
Q: We spoke before, not that long after you arrived in Auburn. Give us an update on how things are going.
A: Yeah, so my official title is chief of the cardiovascular division at Auburn Community Hospital. My main focus of why I came here, though, was to help open a cath [catheterization] lab so that cardiac services can be expanded here in Auburn.
Q: How is that coming along? What’s the state of the lab?
A: It’s still under construction. We’re hoping that it will be open by the end of September, but there are always a lot of hoops to jump through, New York state inspections, this, that and the other thing. So that’s kind of where we are. I would be hesitant to really promise an open just because there’s always some little thing that comes up at the end that can delay things.
Q: What kind of capabilities will the lab have when it’s complete?
A: We’ll be able to do heart catheterizations, coronary angiograms and angioplasties and stents in low- and medium-risk patients.
Q: So you’ll be able to take on cases that are currently being routed to larger hospitals? What kinds of cases are ideal for this kind of catheterization lab?
A: So I guess I should have clarified, it’s not necessarily low-and medium risk patients, it’s really low and medium-risk lesions, blockages that we see and the ones that are probably easier to fix with stents. The other plan is to also provide emergency care 24/7, so that will also lower the burden on some of the bigger hospitals. In addition, patients won’t have to wait as long for care. If you’re having a heart attack in Auburn and then you have to take a 45-minute ambulance ride to Syracuse, that’s time that you’re not getting treated. It really worsens outcomes when that treatment is delayed. So the quicker we can provide treatment in those emergency cases, the better patients will do.
Q: So with the lab under construction, what have you been able to kind of put in place ahead of it?
A: So I’ve spent the time I’ve been here mostly doing general cardiology, which we’ve done here for some time. I kind of prompted them to add a couple of other services like calcium scoring CT scans and then another test called CT angiogram. These are non invasive ways to look for plaque and to screen for heart disease and look for blockages that a lot of other places have, but weren’t available in Auburn. So over the last, I would say, six months we’ve been doing those scans as well.
Q: How has the implementation of those services gone?
A: I think the non invasive stuff has gone very well. We’ve also added nurses with experience in the cath lab and rad techs who also have experience working in other cath labs, so we’re recruiting them to come here to you know help start the program.
Q: How common is it for a hospital of Auburn’s size to have a catheterization lab?
A: That’s a good question. I don’t know a definitive answer to that. This is only a 99-bed hospital. I think, in my experience, it’s pretty rare. In places where I’ve trained, which is like UNC Chapel Hill and another place I worked in North Carolina, those both were big hospitals. We would often get referrals to do catheterizations on patients from hospitals about this size. So I think it’s pretty rare that a hospital this size would have a cath lab.
Q: So with your experience, what are some cath labs you’ve been particularly impressed by during your career? What are you taking away from them and trying to implement in the upcoming lab at Auburn?
A: I’ve only really worked at three: UNC Chapel Hill, University of Massachusetts at Worcester and then Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, North Carolina, where I worked for 18 years. I think all three of those were really good. And I’ve kind of taken aspects from all of them to try to create a high-functioning cath lab here in Auburn. I think the most important thing is having experienced staff and we’ve really made an effort here in Auburn to hire experienced people. It really helps to have experienced people to train people with less experience. It’s just really, in this day and age, it’s hard to hire hospital staff. It’s hard for places to be fully staffed. There is a shortage of nurses. So I think we’ve kind of gone the extra mile to make sure that we have a lot of staff hired. To that point, there’s a rad tech who worked with me in North Carolina for many years. And she’s going to be working in Auburn. She made a commitment to come here for a year and help train people. That’s really valuable for a small place that is just starting out with a new lab.
Q: Prevention is always a big topic when it comes to heart disease. Any advice for keeping people out of the catheterization lab?
A: I still think there’s always room to talk about prevention. We need these services to be a backstop for people when they get really sick but there’s nothing better than actually just preventing the problem in the first place. Living a healthy lifestyle, avoiding smoking, eating a whole food plant-based diet, a high-fiber diet, avoiding processed foods, avoiding foods with added sugar, getting enough activity 30 minutes a day, five days a week of some aerobic exercise and two days a week of some resistance training. Make the investment in yourself at an earlier age, not waiting until you’re 60 or 70 to start taking care of yourself.
Lifelines
Name: Jay Varanasi, M.D.
Position: Cardiologist at Auburn Community Hospital
Hometown: Wappingers Falls
Education: University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences
Affiliations: Auburn Community Hospital
Organizations: American College of Cardiology
Family: Wife, two kids
Hobbies: Cycling, tennis