[HTML1] Ever since December 3, 1967, when Lewis Washkansky became the first human to receive a heart transplant, the public has come to accept this miraculous procedure as possible and, eventually, commonplace. But on this edition of Your Health Matters, host Christopher Springmann learns that not every cardiac patient is a viable candidate for this surgery. Today’s guest is Dr. Enrique Gongora, Director of Heart Transplantation and Ventricular Assist Device (VAD) Programs at Scott & White’s Temple, Texas clinic, and he discusses how certain patients, whether because of advanced age or fragile health, must consider other options. “Those patients are actually good candidates for destination therapy with a Ventricular Assist Device,” explains Dr. Gongora, “because they can treat their heart failures as symptoms and allow them to regain their ability to do exercise. So you can have a patient that was sitting in a chair short of breath and four months down the road that same patient can be golfing 18 holes.” He describes the purpose, engineering and successful outcomes of the VAD, a small machine that is surgically implanted to give the heart mechanical support that will keep the patient alive and healthy. And looking ahead, he says, “We think that the engineering has gotten to the point that the new devices may be able to rival the survival that can be offered with transplantation without maybe requiring the medications for immunosuppression or other transplant related complications.”
More about Enrique Gongora
Dr. Enrique Gongora serves as Director of Heart Transplantation and Ventricular Assist Device Programs at Scott & White Healthcare’s clinic in Temple, Texas. As a cardiothoracic surgeon, he practices adult cardiac, critical care surgery and general surgery. Dr. Gongora began his medical education at Bogota, Columbia’s Universidad Del Rosario. He trained in general surgery and surgical critical care at Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C.; in cardiothoracic surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; and in advanced adult cardiac surgery and cardiothoracic transplantation at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a member of the American Osteopathic Association, the American College of Surgeons, and the American Medical Association. Since Dr. Gongora joined Scott & White Healthcare in 2009, his patient care emphasis has been aortic surgery, arrhythmia surgery, cardiothoracic critical care, coronary artery bypass grafting, heart failure surgery, heart transplant, heart valve surgery, and Ventricular Assist Devices.
More about Scott & White Healthcare
When Arthur C. Scott, M.D. and Raleigh R. White Jr., M.D. began their medical practice in Temple, Texas in 1897, they shared one fundamental conviction: medicine must serve the people. Today, Scott & White Healthcare is a fully integrated health system — the largest multi-specialty practice in Texas and the sixth largest group practice in the nation. Scott & White employs more than 1,100 health care providers and research scientists who care for patients covering 25,000 square miles across Central Texas.
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