HEALTH FIRST'S CARDIAC MRI Program is “a game changer” for common heart procedures like bypass and ablation, Health First Cardiac Electrophysiologist Vishal Patel, MD, says.

Heart patients from Jacksonville to Miami and west Orlando travel to Melbourne for state-of-the-art diagnostic and imaging services at Health First’s Holmes Regional Medical Center.

Advanced cardiac MRI imaging is used to analyze tissue without biopsy and target precise areas in cardiac ablations.

“We have a fantastic cardiac MRI program here – it’s a game changer for surgeons," says Health First Cardiac Electrophysiologist Vishal Patel, MD. "In my case, we use it to make granular assessments of every patient where ablation is indicated, and we use it to risk stratify for sudden cardiac death.”

Risk stratification helps surgeons like him identify who among Afib patients has secondary conditions that make them likely to suffer a life-threatening event, and therefore, would benefit most from surgical intervention.

“You can only get so much by looking at labs and listening to chests, but historically, that’s exactly how we did it,” says Health First’s Richard Thompson, MD, Director of Advanced Cardiac Imagining, which includes Cardiac MRI, CT and PET.

Cardiac MRI has grown so advanced that skilled cardiologists can now perform highly specialized tissue analysis. They can uncover and locate valvular heart disease, scar tissue, fibrosis and blood clots. These factors will be weighed to determine if the underlying conditions causing an arrhythmia may be managed and monitored – or if they are life threatening and require intervention.

“We do a lot of complex imaging cases,” says Dr. Thompson. 

READ the full feature in Florida Today HERE.