News Taffy

For my last column during heart disease awareness month I’d like to clear up a bit of confusion. Over the years, many people have referred to my husband as a heart surgeon which he most emphatically is not. I can certainly understand where the confusion starts as he does make incisions and thread catheters through arteries to the heart or may place a pacemaker in someone’s chest. Though we lay people may think anyone who cuts open the body in any way is a surgeon, doctors and surgeons don't see it that way. I asked my good friend Dr. Jack Havdala, a cardiovascular surgeon, to help explain the difference.

Cardiovascular surgeons treat structural diseases of the heart with an operation. The types of operations a cardiovascular surgeon might do include coronary bypass, heart valve repair and replacements, aortic aneurysm repairs and lung surgery to remove cancers or infectious places in the chest cavity. Coronary bypass is a serious surgery where the surgeon grafts a healthy blood vessel around a blocked artery in your heart to restore blood flow to the heart muscle. An aortic aneurysm is a weakened section somewhere in the aorta which could rupture if not treated, resulting in death. If you are sick enough to need a cardiovascular surgeon, your case is pretty serious.

My husband is a cardiologist; he specializes in diagnosing and treating diseases of the heart and the cardiovascular system. A cardiologist will perform various tests or procedures to check for heart or vascular problems or to open blocked blood vessels in the event of a heart attack. These include echocardiograms, EKG’s, angioplasties, and ablations. Cardiologists may treat patients with medicines or they may perform invasive procedures such as angioplasties and placing stents in blocked arteries. Though it seems odd to us non-medical people, cardiologists do not call these invasive treatments surgery but instead refer to them as procedures. Sometimes a patient is too critically ill for the cardiologist to treat. At that point, the cardiovascular surgeon is called in.

Dr. Havdala says that there have been many advances in the 16 years he has been practicing. Surgery techniques are more refined resulting in shorter recovery times and surgeons can now stent some aneurysms which is less invasive than surgery. (Stenting involves placing a metal and fabric mesh tube in the artery to support a weak spot in the artery wall.) New surgery techniques now allow surgeons to operate on patients who have few options left for treatment, thus saving lives. The heart surgeons in Jonesboro do not operate on children but do fix congenital problems in adults.

Cardiologists and cardiovascular surgeons work closely together to ensure the best possible outcome for their patients. If you are referred to a surgeon for bypass surgery for example, the cardiologist will continue to monitor your heart health after you recover from surgery and have been dismissed from the surgeon’s care.

Dr. Havdala says the best part of his job is when his patient is doing well and the family is relieved and happy. Few things are as satisfying for a physician as knowing they made a major impact on someone’s life.