Heart disease is the number one killer of both men and women in Kentucky. We still live in a tobacco dominated state, and so I still have a lot of smokers as patients and a lot of people with genetic risk factors, family members who've had heart attacks. Generally, people are sent to me for something that's found in their primary care doctor's office, or they're sent to me because of symptoms, and those might include chest pain, shortness of breath, or heart racing symptoms. I like to divide the heart into three sections using the house as an analogy, the plumbing system, the foundation, and the electrical system.

The plumbing system would be evaluated on a stress test, so that's looking for blockages. A stress test involves walking on the treadmill, and then we look at the heart before and after with different types of pictures. If you have a murmur or a structural heart problem, that's evaluated on an echo, which is an ultra sound of the heart. And then a heart monitor looks at the electrical system of the heart or heart rhythm issues.

If you're getting a heart monitor, it's usually lot of patients lot of patients who are motivated after finding heart disease, who go to cardiac rehab programs after a stint, who really get better exercise endurance, who get better with their shortness of breath, and they do well after that.

Miss Burnham, she came to me with symptoms of being tired, and having some funny feelings in her chest whenever she was on the treadmill. With her symptoms, she underwent a heart cath. Miss Burnham had a blockage in the main artery going down the front of her heart. Given that this was the only major blockage that needed treatment in in her young age, I felt like she would do much better with bypass surgery in the long term.

I had a fear of just having my chest cut off because heart disease runs in my family.

And I have experienced it with my dad, my brother, my sister. So I was looking at a new procedure, a minimally invasive with the da Vinci robot.

In some select patients, we can do that where we go between the ribs using the robot to harvest the artery that supplies blood and oxygen to the chest wall and then use that to do the bypass through a small incision under the left breast.

I was very surprised that that technology and expertise a doctor had here in Paducah after researching. Not many hospitals can offer that type of service. I'm very appreciative after getting to know doctor Ward. He performed the procedure, and I was so happy because it was true. The procedure was quick. I was on my feet. He gave me a sense of feeling that I don't think I could have gone outside the Paducah area and gotten.

Heart disease is the number one killer of adult men in the United States.

And when we talk about the cardiac related deaths in men, in many instances, what we are talking about is heart attacks and the complications that arise from a heart attack. The most common symptom that we typically encounter is chest discomfort. Other patients may experience shortness of breath. They may experience a sense that their heart is racing or beating irregularly.

One of the things that we try to get out as a public service message to the community is the importance for men to seek medical attention as early as possible.

At Baptist Health Richmond, we have the capability of doing emergency heart catheterizations and opening a blocked artery, which is causing the heart attack. We have staff that's available twenty four hours a day. And if you present early into your heart attack, we can perform this minimally invasive procedure. And once the blocked heart muscle dies before we have the opportunity to use these techniques that are available here.

Here at Baptist Health urgent and virtual care, we see acute illnesses and minor injuries.

Examples of such would be flu, strep, COVID, common cold, seasonal allergies, rashes, strains, sprains, etcetera.

Providers at the urgent care include doctors, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants.

We can take x rays. We can perform point of care testings, as well as test for urinary tract infection. We can do minor procedures such as laceration repair and wound care. But if you are having chest pain or symptoms of a heart attack, stroke like symptoms, severe abdominal pain, severe vomiting, head injury, car accident with multiple injuries, these are things that should not be seen at an urgent care.

You should go on to the nearest emergency room. We recently ability for people to view wait times at each of our urgent care locations. Now regardless of whether you have a MyChart account or not, you can check-in online as well before your visit. You can also schedule virtual care, a video visit, or evisit through MyChart or at baptist health dot com slash care anywhere.

You could also always simply walk in to the urgent care. We want to get you seen quickly and get you feeling better as soon as we can.

Here at Baptist Health Paducah, we are proud to now have the region's first obstetrical emergency department. This means we're expecting patients we are able to provide twenty four seven access to a board certified obstetrician should they need it immediately.

There's always a board certified obstetrician gynecologist here in house to support patients' doctors.

So whether it be emergent care and preventing any kind of delay in that emergent care or being able to support the clinicians in complicated cases and being that skillful second set of hands to help them. That's really what we're here for, to help the clinicians provide care without delay, especially emergencies and patients not having to have any delay in care. You know, emergencies happen on weekends at two in the morning. And by having a physician in house, there isn't a delay in emergency care. We can see the patient immediately, assess the patient, coordinate with their clinician, and get get them in.

And ultimately, what it does is improve care for moms and babies.

Having an obstetrician here twenty four seven on the floor in the hospital is a wonderful and beneficial factor. It gives our patients extreme amount of ease and calm.

Peripheral vascular disease is where you develop plaque primarily in the arteries in the leg, and then it decreases the blood flow to the leg or to the foot. An aortic aneurysm is where the aorta, the main artery that leaves the heart, gets dilated and enlarges.

Mister Spraggs discovered that he had an aneurysm on a CT scan that was done for unrelated reason. We reviewed his prior scans and discovered that it had became much larger.

He took a paper out and drawed on it of what needed to be done, which I thought was great because it eased me down some. But I knew that it had to be done because an aneurysm is not something you play around with.

And then we were able to perform an endovascular aneurysm repair through a very small incision in the groin, and we're able to cover and exclude that enlarged artery from the circulation. He did very well and went home the next day.

Once we got it done, I'm relieved. I feel like I've got a new lease on life.

There's a lot of vascular disease in this region and the area surrounding Paducah, and I think Baptist does a great job of keeping the patient at the center and providing very efficient, great care for the patient with good outcomes.

I thought everybody were great. I mean, they I was nervous, of course, and, everybody treated me really nice. It was quite the experience.

We do open heart surgery at Baptist Louisville and at Baptist Floyd. So we have two programs that we work with. We do all phases of adult cardiac surgery and adult congenital heart surgery. We do bypass surgery.

We do all phases of valve surgery. We do minimally invasive surgery with CABG, which is coronary artery bypass grafting. And what that means is we take, patient's conduits, either a vein from the leg or an artery in the chest, to bypass obstructions to their coronary arteries that run on the surface of the heart. So we do all phases of adult heart surgery except for transplants and left ventricular assist device.

There are a number of things to consider when choosing where to go for open heart surgery. The best thing to look at is the quality data that's available. The Society of Thoracic Surgery collects data on all our patients and for five years running, we're in the top twenty percent of programs across the country. In addition to that, referrals by your family doctor and by cardiologists, they really will give you an idea of where to go for open heart surgery.

I think it's the total package for open heart surgery at Baptist. We have very high technology, but we also have that personal touch that, is provided by our nurses, our respiratory therapists, our anesthesiologists, and our support personnel.