Those are comments from just three patients of Dr. James R. Foster in a video tribute to the WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular physician that aired April 21. Foster is retiring this year after 40 years as a physician and more than two decades at WHV.

Premiered at WHV’s annual Cardiovascular Disease Symposium, the tribute featured comments from former patients, fellow physicians and other medical colleagues about Foster’s compassionate treatment and thoroughness as a clinician. Foster also was a professor at UNC-Chapel Hill’s School of Medicine.

Medical colleagues said Foster helped introduce electrophysiology – the diagnosis and treatment of electrical activities of the heart – to the region, and for being an expert in understanding the rhythm of the heart.

The annual symposium provides doctors and other medical providers with the latest information on cardiovascular medicine, and includes medical procedures performed on patients and broadcast live from surgical rooms at area hospitals.

About WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular
An experienced group of cardiologists and trained staff, WHV provides comprehensive heart services to prevent, diagnose and treat a full range of cardiovascular-related conditions. As heart specialists, the group is committed to providing access to quality health care in the Raleigh area, Wake County, and surrounding counties in Eastern North Carolina. Through their affiliation with UNC Health Care, WHV specialists can tap into the most up-to-date research and expertise, providing their patients with access to clinical trials and new therapies, resulting in the best cardiovascular care in the area. When it comes to patients’ cardiovascular care – We know it by heart.

Media Contact: PB Media, Paul V. Brown Jr. 919-698-7871.

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This will be the sixth year that WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular presents the popular symposium. It offers the most up-to-date perspectives on heart and vascular issues facing health care professionals, with a focus on strategies for prevention, detection and treatment of patients who seek treatment from primary physicians. It includes innovative practices, recent research findings and challenges confronting cardiovascular care.

The all-day 2012 Cardiovascular Disease Symposium will be held at the Renaissance Raleigh North Hills Hotel, 4100 Main at North Hills St., beginning at 8:25 am. This year’s theme is “The Heart of the Matter.”

The symposium is intended for medical professionals involved in delivering cardiovascular care, with an emphasis on cardiology, emergency medicine, internal medicine, family practice physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses and radiology technicians.

Information and the registration form are at www.wakeAHEC.org. The form also can be submitted by fax to 919-350-0467, or by mail to Wake AHEC, Attn: Cindy Kiphuth, 3261 Atlantic Ave., Suite 212, Raleigh, NC 27604.

WHV moved the symposium to the Renaissance hotel because the sessions, usually held in a hospital, were sold out with other attendees standing. The hotel offers more seating.

Founded more than a quarter century ago, WHV is the largest independent cardiology group in North Carolina. Its physicians are recognized nationally in a number of areas, including a less-invasive catheterization procedure. Three WHV physicians recently were cited as 2011-12 Best Doctors in America in Business North Carolina, a statewide magazine. Based in Raleigh, WHV has offices throughout Eastern North Carolina. Its doctors work in hospitals across the region, including Rex, WakeMed, Johnston Health, Granville Health, and Wayne Memorial.

Among the live cases, which will be transmitted from various surgical facilities, will be:
- Angina medical management and coronary revascularization, by Dr. Tift Mann.
- Evolving strategies in the treatment of carotid artery disease and stroke, by Dr. Ravish Sachar.
- The changing paradigm of aortic stenosis care, by Drs. Lee Jobe and Lance Landvater.

For more information, visit the WHV website or call Cindy Kiphuth at 919-350-0455.

About WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular
An experienced group of cardiologists and trained staff, WHV provides comprehensive heart services to prevent, diagnose and treat a full range of cardiovascular-related conditions. As heart specialists, the group is committed to providing access to quality health care in the Raleigh area, Wake County, and surrounding counties in Eastern North Carolina. Through their affiliation with UNC Health Care, WHV specialists can tap into the most up-to-date research and expertise, providing their patients with access to clinical trials and new therapies, resulting in the best cardiovascular care in the area. When it comes to patients’ cardiovascular care – We know it by heart.

Media Contact: PB Media, Paul V. Brown Jr. 919-698-7871.

Heart and blood vessel disease in women are different — biologically different. We don’t know exactly why, but this has been borne out in non-angiographic studies and other things that their disease is typically more diffuse – more widespread. I think some of that’s biology. I think some of that is that women present much, much later in the disease process, because here in the South, “Momma” takes care of everybody else before “Momma takes care of Momma”.

I will show you – from 2004 data.

Green is men; blue is women. This is angioplasty. This is peripheral intervention. This is ICD therapy for sudden death. And this is ICD therapy with heart failure therapy.

Look at men versus women. They’re just not getting the same care! Now, you’ll say, “Well, they all have pacemakers, and in equal amount?” That’s because if you come the hospital and you have complete heart block, you can’t leave without a pacemaker.

Adherents to a low-risk, healthy lifestyle and the risk of sudden cardiac death among women.

This was published in JAMA this summer. So what they wanted to do in this trial was to estimate the degree at which an adherence to a healthy lifestyle may lower the risk of sudden death among women.

They took 81,000 women that were in the nurse’s health study from June ’84 to June 2010 and did a lifestyle questionnaire about every two years. What they defined was low-risk lifestyle — don’t smoke, exercise, your body mass had to be less than 25, and exercise 30 minutes a day or longer. The top 40 percent of the alternative Mediterranean diet score — just lots of vegetables, fruits, nuts, legumes, whole grains, fish, moderate intake of alcohol.

The end point was sudden death within one hour of first symptom… so pretty good study. What this showed was the P values were .001 for smoking, exercise, BMI, and the Mediterranean diet score. Very powerful data that says, “Yes, this is clearly associated with reduction of risk for sudden cardiac death.”

What did they find? Now again — a large number of patients, 82,000 — but only 321 cases of sudden death! So not a big prevalence, but all four low-risk lifestyle factors were significantly and independently associated with a lower risk for sudden death. The proportion of sudden death attributable to smoking, sitting on your butt, being overweight, and poor diet was 81 percent!

Pretty powerful!

The transcatheter aortic valve replacement, or TAVR, gives hope to a group of patients whose natural valves need to be replaced surgically but who may not survive the surgery because of their age or physical condition.

Edwards Lifesciences, the company that developed TAVR, handpicked the team from Rex Healthcare. It will be headed by Dr. Lance Landvater, co-medical director of Rex Cardiothoracic Surgery Specialists. WHV-Wake Heart & Vascular, the state’s largest independent cardiovascular practice, is affiliated with UNC Health Care, which owns and operates Rex.

Click here to read Rex’s full news release about the team and the valve.

About WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular
An experienced group of cardiologists and trained staff, WHV provides comprehensive heart services to prevent, diagnose and treat a full range of cardiovascular-related conditions. As heart specialists, the group is committed to providing access to quality health care in the Raleigh area, Wake County, and surrounding counties in Eastern North Carolina. Through their affiliation with UNC Health Care, WHV specialists can tap into the most up-to-date research and expertise, providing their patients with access to clinical trials and new therapies, resulting in the best cardiovascular care in the area. When it comes to patients’ cardiovascular care – We know it by heart.

Media Contact: PB Media, Paul V. Brown Jr. 919-698-7871.

That’s one question fielded Monday by Dr. Gregory C. Rose of WHV-Wake Heart & Vascular on the television show “Rex On Call.”

Rose’s answer: Immediately!

“There is a saying that goes in cardiology that ‘time is muscle.’ A heart attack is when the heart muscle starts to die because it’s not getting enough blood supply. From the time that the artery closes off…to the time that the muscle dies is about 18 minutes, and heart attacks are usually complete in four to six hours. So as soon as someone is having chest discomfort and they are concerned that they are having a heart attack, they need to seek immediate evaluation.”

Rose and Dr. George Adams of Rex Heart and Vascular Specialists answered a series of such basic but critical questions on the show. They were guest experts on the February edition of “Rex on Call,” a monthly health show on WRAL-TV hosted by the station’s Kim Dean Holderness. Airing live at 1 p.m. on the third Monday of every month, “Rex on Call” gives callers a chance to ask health questions and have them answered by medical experts from Rex Healthcare. It is also streamed on the Internet.
You can watch the entire show here.

WHV-Wake Heart & Vascular, the state’s largest independent cardiovascular practice, is affiliated with UNC Health Care, which owns and operates Rex.

Some of the other questions that Rose and Adams answered dealt with peripheral artery disease (“It’s a potent marker that you need to have your heart or carotid arteries checked”); how smoking affects the cardiovascular system (research shows tobacco damages blood vessels and lowers a person’s good cholesterol); should a woman experiencing shortness of breath begin an exercise regimen; and why stents might have been placed in a patient.

Rose wasn’t the only member of the WHV-Wake Heart & Vascular staff to appear on the show. Rebecca Green, manager of WHV’s Smithfield office, was part of the phone bank team that took questions from viewers.

About WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular
An experienced group of cardiologists and trained staff, WHV provides comprehensive heart services to prevent, diagnose and treat a full range of cardiovascular-related conditions. As heart specialists, the group is committed to providing access to quality health care in the Raleigh area, Wake County, and surrounding counties in Eastern North Carolina. Through their affiliation with UNC Health Care, WHV specialists can tap into the most up-to-date research and expertise, providing their patients with access to clinical trials and new therapies, resulting in the best cardiovascular care in the area. When it comes to patients’ cardiovascular care – We know it by heart.

Media Contact: PB Media, Paul V. Brown Jr. 919-698-7871.

[Excerpt from a presentation to group of OB-GYNs doctors.]

The AHA has developed some things that we need to teach all our patients as well as ourselves (about heart disease in women).

Ten things we need to know:

1. Heart disease is the number one killer of American women today. It kills more women than men.

2. Often times, cardiovascular disease presents differently in women.

3. Signs and symptoms are different.

4. Some testing that we may do as cardiologists are less accurate and more difficult to interpret.

5. There are treatment options – for men and for women.

6. Women can do things to reduce their own risk of cardiovascular disease (very important).

7. We need to empower our patients to know their numbers – their cholesterol, their blood pressure, and their BMI.

8. Lots of things that we can all do – provide information, set good examples, and make sure that they modify their own risk.

9. Adopt the AHA’s healthy heart lifestyle.

10. Every woman can take action themselves to improve their own heart health. We do that as a partnership – it’s a team effort.

That’s what NBC-17 News Anchorwoman Melanie Sanders learned when she went to Rex Hospital on Valentine’s Day to interview Dr. Kevin R. Campbell, a cardiologist with WHV-Wake Heart & Vascular.

He cites research that says your chances of a heart attack within a day of a breakup increase 21 percent. Heartbreak results in elevated heart rates, a spike in blood pressure and even blood clots.

In case you missed it, click here to listen to what Dr. Campbell told viewers about the link between heartbreak and heart attacks.

About WHV – Wake Heart & Vascular
An experienced group of cardiologists and trained staff, WHV provides comprehensive heart services to prevent, diagnose and treat a full range of cardiovascular-related conditions. As heart specialists, the group is committed to providing access to quality health care in the Raleigh area, Wake County, and surrounding counties in Eastern North Carolina. Through their affiliation with UNC Health Care, WHV specialists can tap into the most up-to-date research and expertise, providing their patients with access to clinical trials and new therapies, resulting in the best cardiovascular care in the area. When it comes to patients’ cardiovascular care – We know it by heart.

Media Contact: PB Media, Paul V. Brown Jr. 919-698-7871.