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Click here for the Heart Hope web site. It contains more detailed information for people with end-stage heart failure.
Maintaining Heart Health
Whether you've had a cardiac event or are at serious risk for one, it is essential that you pursue a fitness goal. Our team can help.
Nursing Units Addressing Unique Needs
What may seem like subtle differences in cardiac medicine can actually be quite significant. Lutheran addresses this by allowing nurses to specialize in very specific care areas.
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Lutheran Hospital has been notified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) that it has become one of the first 16 sites in the country, and the first hospital in the state of Indiana, to be approved to use left ventricular assist devices (LVADs), or partial artificial hearts, for permanent placement in end-stage heart failure patients.
Until last year, LVADs were only used as a "bridge" to heart transplantation. That changed in November of 2002 when the Food and Drug Administration approved the Thoratec HeartMate® LVAD for Destination Therapy. Destination Therapy indicates the LVAD is being implanted as permanent support for congestive heart failure, not as a bridge to transplant. Being chosen by CMS as a Destination Therapy Facility means Medicare will reimburse that specific hospital for LVAD implants in patients who are not eligible for heart transplantation for one reason or another. Prior to this, insurance carriers had only covered LVAD implants for patients on a transplant waiting list.
"Over the years, I have been frustrated as a surgeon when confronted with a patient who is not a heart transplant candidate, yet suffers with severe heart failure," said Alan Peterson, MD, Lutheran Heart Center Transplant Team. "It is very gratifying, after participating in the development of this technology over the past 16 years, to see it reach a point where we can now help patients who previously had so few options."
These first facilities are now in a better position to make LVAD placement a viable alterative for their patients. Lutheran joins heart programs such as Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Johns Hopkins Hospital and University of Michigan Health System as some of the first to meet the criteria established for this CMS designation.
Over half a million Americans are diagnosed with congestive heart failure annually. The American Heart Association estimates as many as 100,000 people with end-stage heart failure could benefit from Destination Therapy each year. To date, Thoratec reports the HeartMate® has supported patients for as long as three years. Over 3,500 HeartMate® LVADs have been implanted worldwide since 1994. Lutheran Hospital has implanted total artificial hearts in two patients and LVADs in 56 patients since 1987.
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