Cardiology Department at Memorial Health System: Help for the Community
Listen to Solomon Bagae, MD on our podcast Memorial Health Radio in the new episode titled Services offered at Memorial Health System’s Cardiology Department.
Transcription
Melanie Cole (Host): Heart disease is the number one health problem in the mid-Ohio valley, one reason state of the art cardiac care is critical. My guest today is Dr. Solomon Bagae. He’s a cardiologist with Memorial Health System. Welcome to the show Dr. Bagae. Let’s start by telling us a little bit about yourself and what areas do you specialize in?
Dr. Solomon Bagae, MD (Guest): Okay, thank you for this opportunity. My name is Solomon Bagae and I am one of the cardiologists at the Memorial Health System. My background is I am trained in general cardiovascular disease and I am currently specialized mainly treating general cardiology and congestive heart failure or what is called heart failure. And currently I am running the Heart Failure Clinic at Memorial Health System.
Melanie: What are you seeing Dr. Bagae as far as awareness and information about heart disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, any of these things. Do people – are they aware of these things and the risk factors involved?
Dr. Bagae: Yeah, my general assessment is awareness is much lower than what my expectation is. Currently, the most of our population is not aware of the general expectations when to get the cardiovascular evaluation, what are the major symptoms and what are the major presentations, what can be done even if the cardiovascular disease become clinically relevant. So, as far as I can say this is – there is a lot of missing information in this aspect of cardiovascular disease.
Melanie: So, let’s clear some of that up today Dr. Bagae. If someone sees their family physician as their annual well visit, when would they see a cardiologist for an initial checkup?
Dr. Bagae: Okay, usually most of the main healthcare evaluation start from the primary provider or from their family physician and based on their screening, if the person has what’s called a high cardiovascular risk or if the person has like a familial predisposition to cardiovascular disease, depending on the assessment of their family physician or primary care physician, selectively some of the population needs to be evaluated by a cardiovascular specialist.
Melanie: Tell us about some of the services your cardiology department offers.
Dr. Bagae: We have a very comprehensive group of physicians including PAs, NPs and cardiologists and we provide pretty much most of the cardiovascular screening diagnostic and therapeutic evaluations. This includes general screening, preventive cardiovascular disease, we have a dedicated what’s called heart failure clinic where we treat the heart failure patients. We have general intervention, cardiovascular labs to do what’s called coronary stents and diagnostic procedures and we have a dedicated what’s called arrhythmia or electrophysiology lab where can study the electrophysiology abnormalities or electro calibration problems of the heart. Pretty much, we cover most of the cardiovascular diagnostic screening and therapeutic areas at Memorial Health Hospital.
Melanie: If somebody was to ask you what is the most important screening for heart disease that you would think? Do you tell them a stress test or a coronary calcium scan or blood work? What screening do you feel is most important for people to know about?
Dr. Bagae: The first entrance or the first screening method is assessing individual cardiovascular risk score by assessing their background in health, family history, their exposure to cardiovascular risk factors. The first and easiest way to do it will be the assessment of pretty much what is called a cardiovascular assessment, including checking the cholesterol level, blood pressure check, and there are like some modalities of blood tests which we can screen. Then based on that test, then we will provide a next stage of what’s called a cardiovascular screening whether that includes an ultrasound or vascular study, or it might be a calcium score, or it might be a stress test based on individual patient exposure for cardiovascular risk.
Melanie: What prevention advice would you like to give the listeners so maybe they don’t have to come see you?
Dr. Bagae: That’s a good- a very good question. I think the most important thing is first being aware of what are the major cardiovascular risk factors. This includes high blood pressure, family history of a genetic predisposition to cardiovascular risk, diabetes, checking their cholesterol level, checking their family background and to make sure that there is no cardiovascular disease and by knowing aware of their risk, they can do a lot of intervention that means by doing what’s called life modification this includes watching weight, an appropriate diet, exercise regimen, and some of prescreening for cholesterol level and blood pressure and preventing that from happening.
Melanie: Tell us what’s going on in the field of cardiology. What’s exciting?
Dr. Bagae: What’s exciting is cardiovascular area is the most researched area in medicine and there are so many new upcoming breakthroughs in cardiovascular diseases. It is not just like from screening of the cardiovascular problems to advance therapy once the patient develop already heart failure. There are new breakthroughs like in genetic testing how that is going to be applied in medicine to the advanced disease where at the time where the person is already in advanced cardiovascular disease to take care of them with advanced therapies like transplanting and mechanical assist devices. So, there are a lot of developments in cardiology.
Melanie: What would you like to tell the listeners as the most important bit of information that you would like them to know about heart disease and the cardiovascular services offered at Memorial Health System?
Dr. Bagae: I think my biggest advice will be for the person to be aware. There is no young or old person to get screened. And if we get screened early, and if we know our risk and predisposition this can prevent major adverse effects like heart attack, heart failure and stroke. So, my main advice will be to get screened early and to do an intervention before the heart disease or cardiovascular disease appears.
Melanie: Dr. Bagae, people have questions about things like along the prevention lines, aspirin therapy. What do you tell people when they ask you about should they be taking a baby aspirin every day?
Dr. Bagae: That’s a very good question. I mean because there are like different information and different diversities in thinking this process. So, in taking aspirin, a person has to have a risk factor. There are people who will be qualifying to be on aspirin, but not everybody is a candidate for aspirin, so this is going to be determined based on what’s called their cardiovascular risk factors and predisposition and this can be done by either their primary physician or by cardiologist and they can tell them exactly what their risk score for the next ten years or in lifelong and depending on – based on that number, we can know if the person has to take aspirin.
Melanie: Thank you so much. Really great information. You’re listening to Memorial Health Radio with Memorial Health System. For more information please visit www.mhsystem.org that’s www.mhsystem.org. This is Melanie Cole. Thanks so much for listening.
