Modern medicine offers several alternative ways to treat cardiovascular disease, many of which can be performed on an outpatient basis without surgery.
Percutaneous Transluminal Angioplasty (Balloon Angioplasty)
This procedure opens blocked blood vessels to the heart, legs, kidneys and elsewhere in the body without surgery. A catheter with a tiny balloon on the tip is threaded into the narrowed artery. The balloon is inflated, pressing plaque against the walls of the blood vessel, creating a channel for increased blood flow.
Atherectomy or Rotablator
These techniques are similar to balloon angioplasty, except that they use non-surgical devices that cut or pulverize the plaque in the vessel, rather than just press it against the vessel wall. (The Institute was the first in South Florida to offer the Rotablator device, which is especially useful in arteries that are not treatable with angioplasty or atherectomy.)
Thrombolytic Therapy
The use of clot-busting medication to break up and dissolve blood clots.
Stents
Tiny, expandable metal tubes used inside arteries to help keep vessels open throughout the body.
Transjugular Intrahepatic Portosystemic Shunt (TIPS)
A non-surgical treatment using a balloon catheter and a stent to open blood flow through the liver, stopping damage caused by liver disease.
Bypass Graft Surgery
Also called coronary (heart) bypass or arterial (in the legs and abdomen) bypass surgery, this surgical procedure creates a detour around a narrow or blocked part of an artery by attaching another blood vessel taken from elsewhere in the body.
Minimally Invasive Heart Surgery
Offers some patients an alternative to traditional open heart surgery. Instead of opening the chest through a long incision and cutting through the rib cage, the surgery is performed through a three-inch opening. The surgery is performed on a beating heart and does not require a heart-lung machine, which is used with traditional surgery.
Other surgical procedures include pacemaker implants and procedures to correct congenital cardiovascular problems and repair aortic aneurysms.
Both Baptist Cardiac & Vascular Institute and South Miami Heart Center offer a wide range of interventional/surgical services.