Aundrea's Guestbook

Aundrea Green  Thank you. I will have to look into the hospital. Not sure how far I am from there. Do they specialize in conditions like mine?

Rob Sparling  Aundrea, go to the “Heart Hospitals” drop-down at the top of the page and zoom in on the NY region. Each hospital there shows a lot of high level detail which can be helpful in getting you started, including hospital guides and contact info. Those folks here from the NY area or who have been patients there can comment on those options.

It all depends on what you need. Being heart patients ourselves, it makes me nervous to give you advice! I’ll keep it generic and say “find the best team” and “start with a cardiologist” because that person will know what kind of specialization is required to get you where you need to be. But knowing where a specialized surgeon is that you think you might need will direct you to find a cardiologist in the same institution.

If you research Cleveland Clinic, Mayo, or other world-class places you can find the profiles of the cardiologists and surgeons and get a feel for what they specialize in and how much experience they have (in terms of numbers of procedures).

For instance, check out cardiologists at Cleveland Cinic including Dr Venu Menon, Dr Milind Desei, Dr Deborah Kwon, Dr Brian Griffin, etc and note the amount and type of experience they have.

Then search for surgeons including Dr Lars Svenson, Dr Marc Gillinov, Dr Gosta Pettersson, Dr Edward Soltesz, Dr Stephanie Mick, Dr Eric Roselli. I may have left a few out! But read about what their areas of expertise are. You get the picture!

The same process can be followed anywhere, whether NY, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Duke, etc.

I really hope this helps! I don’t know it takes much more than time and determination to get in front of these wonderful people.

Are your parents helping you do homework and legwork?