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Heart Care

Centered on You

Baptist Health's highly skilled cardiologists offer a progressive approach to heart care with personalized, patient-oriented diagnosis and treatment protocols. Whether your diagnosis is coronary artery and vascular disease, heart failure or heart rhythm disorders, our doctors and staff members help our heart patients in and around Kentucky live better, healthier lives with the best possible outcomes.

No matter what type of heart care you need, our heart team provides everything from prevention to treatment:

  • Prevention: In addition to standard screening tests, we use innovative new practices to detect disease in its earliest stages. Learn more about heart and vascular screenings.
  • Diagnosis: Using a variety of techniques and specialized equipment, we conduct quick and accurate testing for a proper diagnosis of your condition.
  • Treatment: Combining the skills of our heart and vascular surgeons, we offer advanced treatments such as minimally invasive repair of heart valve disease. We also offer expert care for common conditions, such as high blood pressure.
  • Rehabilitation: Our personalized programs help you recover from certain procedures and avoid future complications.

It's a team effort: Our specialists come together to discuss and plan for every step, working closely with you, your family and other doctors you may be seeing during your period of care. A central focus of our planning is the convenience of care. Our Kentucky cardiology and heart care program is committed to providing you with access to the best network of medical care available.

Innovative Treatments in Heart Care

Baptist Health is also one of only two heart care groups in Kentucky that provide Radial Artery Catheterization, another breakthrough technology in cardiology where the catheter is applied through the wrist area instead of through the leg. This heart care technology has been shown to save lives, reduce recovery time and help people live longer. Some of our locations also offer cardiac MRI.

We provide advanced, superior care for patients with heart disease and access to the region's most comprehensive, multidisciplinary team of specialists and innovative therapies, including many available only through specialized clinical trials.

Premier Heart Attack Centers Support Heart Care 

As part of our heart care program, our patients benefit from premier heart attack centers with high designations from the American College of Cardiology (ACC). No other health care system in Kentucky has that as part of their heart care facilities.

Learn More About Our Heart Care Services

Staffed with physicians deeply involved within their communities, Baptist Health can provide complete heart care services for our patients. If you have any questions or requests regarding heart care or Kentucky cardiology, please use the contact form linked below. You can request information or ask about any part of the Kentucky heart care system. However, this form is not meant to address emergencies, medication requests, scheduling, or insurance questions.

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♪ [music] ♪

- [Byron] I didn't have any heart attack signs at all.

I just felt nauseous and I went and I threw up in the
sink and I told my wife then that we need to go

to the hospital.

- [Dr. Rains] So when Mr. Hodge got to our cath
lab and we proceeded with our normal cardiac

catheterization where we take pictures of his
heart's arteries, we found severe blockages

in really all of the arteries that
supply the heart with blood.

And very quickly I could identify that his
disease was surgical coronary artery disease.

I first called our surgeon, Dr. Ward,
who came very quickly to the cath lab.

- [Dr. Ward] The best way that we can help
unload the heart and assist its function is

to place a small pump through his groin that
sits inside the heart called an Impella CP,

which Dr. Rains placed in the cath lab.

- It allowed him to survive and improve over the next
couple of days that allowed him to go have open heart

bypass surgery with Dr. Ward.

- Dr. Rains and I and the cardiology team work together
all the time and we know that patient outcomes are

best when we put our heads together,
work as a team to come up with the best plan

for each patient.

And Mr. Hodge, he definitely benefited hugely
from having a multidisciplinary approach.

- All the people, they were so kind to me.
They were just real good people.

The doctors though, they were great.

They were friendly, made me feel like they
were friends instead of just my doctors.

I wouldn't go anywhere
else but Baptist Health, Paducah.

♪ [music] ♪
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I have a beautiful wife named Amy, and I have ten grandkids.

A perfect day for me, getting up in the morning, sitting drinking coffee with the wife, Amy, and us getting on the motorcycle and just taking off. It's relaxing. Just my perfect day. Just getting up every day and enjoying my family.

I was at my grandson's baseball game.

My legs started hurting and hurting. I'd stand up. I'd sit down. I'd stand up. I'd sit down.

I made it through the night, and then it just started turning purple. So that's when I went to the checking myself in emergency at Baptist, and they had the emergency surgery. It was a clot that was blocking the blood flow on my leg. I had a clot in my heart.

I had a clot in my lung. Doctor Chinchurian at Baptist Floyd, I mean, he took over my medical condition.

Wonderful, smart doctor.

When we worked his heart up, his heart was very enlarged, and he had a a big clot within the heart. But he also had a condition called left bundle branch block, an electrical issue in his heart to where the message for the heart to beat was not being distributed evenly.

So if you think of it as a pump, the walls weren't contracting at the same time. The right side was coming in first and then the left side, and that was making the pump very inefficient.

As a result, his heart function had decreased quite a bit. We implanted a special defibrillator called biventricular ICD, which synchronizes the heartbeats to where it's beating as naturally as possible.

And of course, we also introduced some medications as well. And within a few months his heart function recovered to almost normal. He did a lot of good things on his part with rehab and eating healthy.

Our cardiac rehab, it's a medically supervised program for exercise.

When Jim came in, he wasn't feeling very well and had had issues with his heart. We worked with him, setting him up in an exercise program where you do small amounts on treadmills, bicycles, arm ergometers, or what what people call arm bicycles.

From that, we increase as they get better. There's a lot of education that goes into what we do with the patients, and it's a really, it's a multidisciplinary approach.

You got all these nurses there, all these people, all these doctors that are right there. That gave me comfort. I work out at rehab, and then I can go to a gym. You know? We do it, and it's fun, and we get to do it together. I start eating better, taking care of myself, and I was about about forty five pounds.

To see a patient who really had a whole lot of problems to come in and tell us, I'm going to the gym. I'm you know, my a one c is under control. I don't smoke. I've I've kept my weight down. It's so gratifying.

Baptist Health Floyd offers a wide variety of treatment options for all aspects of cardiac care, not to mention amazing physicians, amazing staff, nurses. I feel like I'm making a positive impact. People like Jim with good results keep me going.

Baptist Health Floyd was amazing. The staff was amazing. I just keep chugging. I feel proud of myself.

I want to help other people, you know, not to give up. Look at me now. I'm married. Got a beautiful wife.

I just love life now. I wanna stay here as long as I can.

James Whitlock

James was at his grandson's baseball game when he began experiencing severe leg pain and discoloration. At Baptist Health Floyd, doctors discovered blood clots in his leg, heart, and lungs, along with an electrical issue that prevented his heart from beating in sync. Dr. Garen Chinchurian treated him by implanting a specialized defibrillator to coordinate his heartbeat, and with the help of cardiac rehab and lifestyle changes, James was able to return to enjoying life with his family.

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