What is the size of your cath lab facility and number of staff members?
 
Ed Roberson Heart Center cath lab includes three cath rooms, an interventional radiology room and a 12-bed pre/post chest pain unit.

Staff consists of:

• 12 full-time registered nurses (RNs)

• 1 PRN (pro re nata, or as-needed) RN

• 5 full-time radiologic technologists (RTs)

• 2 PRN radiologic technologists

• 1 American College of Cardiology National Cardiovascular Data Registry (ACC-NCDR) database coordinator

• 1 picture archiving and communication systems (PACS)

Dr. Mehta recently performed his 500th short door-to-balloon time STEMI intervention in the SINCERE (Single Individual Community Experience Registry for Primary PCI) database. He shares his thoughts on the latest developments in STEMI interventions and the upcoming February 2010 LUMEN conference (www.lumenami.com).

The SINCERE database is a single operator performing STEMI at five community hospitals. Why keep a database and how do you refine it?

The database enables a scientific evaluation of methods and techniques, and it has provided a superb source for publication, teac

Dr. Coppola has been teaching the transradial technique for five years.

How long have you been performing transradial procedures?

I began performing transradial procedures in November 2003.

Why learn and how did it come about?

In New York State, we track all of our complications in the cath lab. I have been cathing since 1981 and cath lab director since 1993. Over the years, I’ve had occasion to see a lot of femoral complications. St. Vincent’s is a busy lab, so every 12-18 months we would have at least one death we could attribute to a femoral complication.

Consolidating catheterization and surgical units is an economical solution, once cultural objections are overcome.

The economic case for consolidating a hospital’s catheterization and surgical units, is, in many ways, a no-brainer.

In an era of tightened money belts for facility expansions that can cost up to $400 per square foot, choosing consolidation instead can free up space and cut costs indicative to this type of renovation project, usually by half. With consolidation, there is also potentially greater savings pertaining to daily operation costs over time of use, associa

Healthcare is an incredibly rewarding field. Rich Bluni, RN, author of Inspired Nurse, reveals methods that will help you look at your job in a whole new (positive) way.

Anyone who’s been in healthcare for more than five minutes can tell you that it is an incredible field. Our highs are the highest, and our lows are the lowest. During any given day, we might plunge from the peak of saving a life to the valley of seeing one end before its time. Yes, ours is a journey of extreme ups and downs, and it’s all too easy to let the latter overwhelm the former. But according to Rich B

What is unique about the vProtect™ Luminal Shield?

This stent is part of a new generation of self-expandable nitinol stents. In this particular stent design, the radial force has been calculated to achieve less chronic outward force — an issue with previous designs — while maintaining a similar crush-resistant force to that of balloon-expandable stents. Even though the stent tends to expand gradually over time, the resulting radial force level is half or less than that of earlier self-expandable coronary stents. At the same time, the stent is able to maintain a stable crush-res

Introduction

by Scott Hardin, Director of Cardiovascular Services

When it comes to caring for patients, Carol Humble, cath lab inventory manager at Memorial Health Care System in Chattanooga, Tenessee, knows what it takes. After 14 years of direct patient care as a registered nurse, Carol has turned her focus to managing the vast amount of inventory in Memorial’s cardiac cath, electrophysiology, and peripheral labs. As an RN turned inventory manager, Carol knows the importance of having the right products at the right time for the physician — leading to improved care fo

Picture yourself at your hospital’s employee benefits fair. In front of you is the funny guy from the cafeteria. Ahead of him is the CEO’s secretary. Behind you are the hospital’s cardiologists.

The hospital’s cardiologists?

Ten years ago, five years ago, or even one year ago, hospital-employed cardiologists were not the norm. Now, cardiology groups seem to be signing up with hospitals as fast as they can crank out news releases announcing it.

What’s changed? Let’s look at the recent past.

Cardiologists used to align with hospitals providing them the best facilities, la

I was recently asked at our Cath Lab Basics 2009 course in Seattle, “What can the techs/nurses do to introduce a new and better way of doing something in the lab to the physicians and ultimately to the patients?” For example, how does one implement physicians changing to routinely using 6F rather than 8F guides for percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), performing intravascular ultrasound (IVUS)/fractional flow reserve (FFR), or starting the radial approach? In other words, can you cure the “OD can’t learn NT syndrome” (remembering that some of the old dogs are not really so old)?