About the Heart Center at Sinai
As one of the region's most comprehensive cardiac care centers, The Heart Center at Sinai offers advanced heart care, a highly equipped cardiac catheterization laboratory, and an Emergency Chest Pain Evaluation Unit that makes chest pain a priority, allowing physicians to diagnose and begin treatment at the earliest possible moment. Other services include a Coronary Care/Progressive Care unit with 14 coronary care beds and 48 progressive care, including 12 Open Heart Step-Down beds.
Institute for Preventive Cardiology
The LifeBridge Health Cardiac Rehabilitation program is a three-phase program designed to help improve cardiovascular well being for those to whom it has been recommended to begin a program of cardiovascular care.
Located at Northwest Hospital, the Cardiac Rehabilitation Phase II of the program is a 12-week medically supervised exercise program that helps with recovery after a heart attack, angioplasty and/or stenting and open-heart surgery. It is also beneficial for patients who suffer from stable angina pectoris.
The Schapiro Cardiac Diagnostic Center
The Schapiro Cardiac Diagnostic Center features six state-of-the-art catheterization labs and is the first hospital in the greater Baltimore area to offer a flat-panel, biplane X-ray machine. This revolutionary technology takes simultaneous images of the heart at two different angles, providing physicians and technicians with crisper, cleaner and fully digital images of a patient’s arteries and veins. Often described as “high definition TV for the heart,” these images can reduce procedure time; aid in the performance of complex procedures; and ultimately provide better, safer outcomes.
Coronary Artery Bypass
This is the most common surgical treatment for addressing blockages of the heart. During this procedure, the surgeon takes a portion of vein from the inner thigh or calf and the mammary artery to form a bypass around the vessels of heart artery that has become blocked. The bypass graft reroutes blood flow around the blockage. A patient can have as many as four to six artery bypasses.
Valve Replacement and Repair
The heart's four valves let blood in and out of the heart's chambers. Disease or scarring can hurt the valves' ability to open and close properly. This leads to a weakened heart muscle, causing pain, shortness of breath and other symptoms. During valve repair, the surgeon may cut or separate the flaps of a narrowed or damaged valve. A leaking valve may be repaired to help it close more tightly. Valves that cannot be repaired may be replaced with a mechanical or tissue valve, depending upon the specific needs of the patient.
Surgery of the Aorta or Aortic Root
The aorta, the main artery in the body, carries fresh oxygenated blood out of the left ventricle of the heart and delivers it to the body. There are two reasons for aortic surgery. An aneurysm is an enlargement of the blood vessel due to a weakening of the vessel walls. As the aneurysm enlarges, the risk of rupture increases. If an aneurysm tears in a section of the weakened blood vessel, it is called an aortic dissection. When this happens, blood flows through the tear into the space between the layers and may cut off flow to branch vessels or rupture. Surgical treatment is based on risk of rupture and dissection within the enlarged section of the aorta. The weakened blood vessel can be replaced with an artificial tube or, in some cases repaired, sparing the patient's valve.
Congenital Heart Defects
Most heart defects either obstruct blood flow in the heart or vessels near it or cause blood to flow through the heart in an abnormal pattern. Obstructions partially or completely block the flow of blood and occur in the heart valves, arteries, or veins. Although some heart defects can be treated with medicine, surgery is usually more appropriate and is used to repair the defect as completely as possible to create a normal circulation.
The Heart Center at Sinai - winner of two prestigious Premier Awards for Quality in the areas of Heart Failure and Coronary Artery Bypass Graft
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