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45 °F Forecast | Road Cams Saturday, November 13, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Passport to the Rogue Valley EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend November 8, 2004 Frank Ferraris of Williams undergoes a heart-strengthening treatment called external counterpulsation at Rogue Valley Medical Center under the supervision of technician David Hughes. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven The heart of the matter RVMC receives national recognition for cardiac care By BILL KETTLER Mail Tribune With its elaborate leg cuffs, whirring motors and pulsating plastic tubes, the machine could have come from a mad-scientist movie. Serious hardware notwithstanding, Frank Ferraris has learned to love Rogue Valley Medical Center’s CardiAssist machine. Over the past few weeks, it has given the man from Williams more energy than he’s had in years. "Before I came here, I couldn’t do any outside work at all," says Ferraris, 62, who has heart problems and diabetes. "Now, even if I can only work 15 or 20 minutes, I can sit down and rest for a half hour and pick it up again." Functioning like a series of giant blood pressure cuffs, the machine forces blood from the legs and buttocks back into the heart during the brief instant between each heart beat. That reduces the work the heart has to do and increases the flow of blood through the coronary arteries. When the heart pumps again, the cuffs relax, lowering resistance in the blood vessels. The machine helps blood flow more easily to the heart muscle, says cardiologist Brian Gross, and somehow the heart muscle responds by developing a network of tiny new blood vessels that detour around blocked or narrowed arteries. Advertisement "The exact mechanism by which it works isn’t exactly clear," Gross says, "but it works." The procedure, known as "external counterpulsation," is reserved for people with heart problems whose health is too fragile for them to tolerate surgery or other invasive procedures. Gross says more than 100 patients have been treated on the machine so far, and about 80 percent of them have felt definite improvement. "It’s for the sickest of the sick," Gross says, "the people who have no other options." For stronger patients, physicians use more aggressive treatments to fix an ailing heart. Their success helped RVMC win recognition as one of the nation’s top 100 cardiovascular hospitals. Solucient, an Illinois-based hospital information company, evaluated hospitals that treat heart attack and congestive heart failure and perform coronary artery bypass surgery and coronary artery stent placement. Patients at winning hospitals were 35 percent less likely than patients at non-winners to have post-operative infections and 20 percent less likely to have post-operative complications. Patients at winning hospitals were also more likely to be released sooner. Among its top 100, Solucient recognizes 30 top community hospitals as well as 40 teaching hospitals with cardiovascular residency programs and 40 teaching hospitals without cardiovascular residency programs. RVMC has made the list in four of the past five years in the category of community hospitals. "It’s very hard to be a benchmark hospital," says Jeanne Chenoweth, who manages Solucient’s 100 Top Hospitals program. "All hospitals have areas of expertise and superior care. It’s incredible that Medford has a hospital that has set the standard for four out of the five past years." Solucient compares data from hundreds of patients at each hospital and identifies those that have the highest success rates. Tiny fractions of percentage points separate winners from non-winners. "We’re looking for the highest-performing hospitals, period," she says. "In consumer terms, a hospital could miss (the top 100 list) by a thousandth of a percentage point. "Number 30 wins (in RVMC’s category) and number 31 doesn’t," she explained. RVMC is the only hospital in Jackson County that performs all the procedures that Solucient evaluated. Providence Medford Medical Center and Ashland Community Hospital were excluded from consideration because they do not perform the full range of procedures that were measured. Solucient’s study indicates that if all U.S. hospitals performed at the top hospitals’ benchmark standards, 4,200 additional cardiac patients would survive each year, and 1,600 more patients would be free of post-operative complications. Gross, the cardiologist, says the hospital succeeds because everyone knows how to work as a team. "We have an incredibly cooperative cardiology community," he says. "In lots of larger communities with lots of cardiologists, they don’t talk. Here lots of interchange goes on. We bring in nurses and technicians, and it works very well." Physicians at RVMC performed 634 open-heart surgeries during 2003 and placed more than 800 stents in damaged arteries. "If you work as a team and you do a lot of it, you get pretty good at it," Gross says. Reach reporter Bill Kettler at 776-4492, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions Website Feedback ADVERTISERS A D V E R T I S E R S SPECIAL SECTIONS Auto Finder Job Finder Home Finder Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Tempo Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Moving to Southern Oregon? Volunteer Opportunities