[HTML1] Segment A (0:00 – 11:00)
Your Health Matters host Christopher Springmann speaks with Dr. Kenton Zehr, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Scott & White Healthcare, about the Maze Treatment for atrial fibrillation.
Atrial fibrillation is among the most common cardiac diseases in the US. It’s what can happen when the heart’s pumping chambers develop their own rhythm separate from a healthy heartbeat. In this segment of Your Health Matters, host Christopher Springmann speaks with Dr. Kenton Zehr, Chief of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Scott & White Healthcare, about a new surgical treatment for a condition that is generally managed through medication. The Maze procedure, or more specifically the Cox Maze III, is successful although not yet widely performed. “We open up the chest,” explains Dr. Zehr. “We put the patient on the cardiopulmonary bypass. And we make a series of cuts and re-sew those cuts to create, if you will, a child’s maze so that the electrical pathway can only go from the SA Node to the AV Node in one way and get the patient back into rhythm. The Cox Maze III has extremely good results. The freedom from atrial fibrillation long-term is between 80 and 90%, which far exceeds that achieved in any catheter ablation study.”
Segment B (11:01 – 22:00)
Life Love & Health: Special Edition Executive Producer Christopher Springmann speaks with Cathy Elkies about the collectors’ market for new Beatles photos.
In our second segment, Life Love & Health: Special Edition Newsmakers, Executive Producer Christopher Springmann speaks with Cathy Elkies of Christie’s Americas about a set of never-before-seen Beatles photographs and its impact on the competitive market for art and nostalgia. “This is really an unbelievable story,” says Ms. Elkies. “And in a way, the story almost trumps the images, although the images are really quite magnificent as well. Mike Mitchell took these when he was all of 18 years old. He stood at the very front of the stage, and at some point, a cop let him up there. He was really quite an artistic photographer even at a very early age. And what you see in the images is the intimacy with which he captured them. And the fact that these images have been squirreled away for 47 years, never before seen, particularly for Beatles’ fans who think they know it all and have seen it all, it’s just an amazing opportunity to, to get a piece of history that has never been exposed.”
Segment C (22:01 – 33:00)
Christopher Springmann speaks with Dr. Donald Schumacher, President and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, on quality, compassionate care for people facing a life-limiting illness or injury.
Segment D (33:01 – 44:00)
Donald Schumacher on developing a National Center of Care at the End of Life
In our third and fourth segments, Christopher Springmann speaks with Dr. Donald Schumacher, President and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, about the realities of end-of-life care. Palliative care in a hospice setting, simply put, is about medical care and pain management, plus emotional and spiritual support, all tailored expressly to the patient’s needs and wishes. “Some people feel as though if you’re referred to hospice, you’re going to die immediately,” says Dr. Schumacher, dispelling perhaps the most common myth. “And that contributes largely to a very late referral to very, very needed and important care and services. The Medicare hospice benefit is designed certainly to provide palliative medicine to those patients who are terminally ill within a time frame of six months or less. But if that patient should live beyond that six-month time period, they can still remain in hospice and receive the kind of quality services that are absolutely necessary to deal with the issue. And the general response from the patient’s family, after the patient gets admitted to hospice, is, ‘Why did we wait so long to do this?'”
More about Kenton Zehr
Dr. Kenton J. Zehr, MD is Chief of the Division on Cardiothoracic Surgery at Scott & White Healthcare’s Temple, Texas clinic. He earned a B.A. from Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisburg, Virginia, and an M.D. from Pennsylvania State University at Hershey. He trained in general and cardiothoracic surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and also at Harefield Hospital in Harefield, UK. He is the co-developer of a sutureless device for coronary bypass grafting and holds patents for a novel mitral valve repair device. He consults with several groups specializing in device development and serves on several boards. Dr. Zehr joined Scott & White in 2009, where his patient care emphasis is on aortic root reconstruction, aortic and mitral valve repair, and heart failure surgery.
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.
To hear additional Your Health Matters podcasts, click HERE!
More about Cathy Elkies
Catherine D. Elkies is Director of Private and Corporate Collections for Christie’s Americas. She joined the company’s European Furniture and Decorative Arts Department in 1988, and has since served as Managing Director of Christie’s East, Vice President of Christie’s, Regional Director of Christie’s Los Angeles, and President of Christie’s East. In addition to her oversight duties, she serves as a Senior Auctioneer for Christie’s, and has presided over some of the company’s most high profile U.S. sales, including the Personal Property of Marilyn Monroe, Eric Clapton’s Guitars, the Personal Property of Marlon Brando, and 40 Years of Star Trek: The Collection, among others. From 2000 to 2004, Ms. Elkies pioneered interactive television and produced transaction-enabled content for auction and commerce programming as Executive Vice President of The Auction Channel and then as Executive Director and Executive Vice President of MetroTV, a subsidiary of Cablevision.
To learn more about Christie’s offering of historic Beatles photos, click HERE!
More about Donald Schumacher
J. Donald Schumacher, Psy.D. is President and CEO of The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO), President and CEO of the National Hospice Foundation, and President of the Foundation for Hospices in Sub-Saharan Africa. Under his direction, NHPCO developed and initiated The Blueprint for Quality and Access, promoting continuous improvement in the quality of hospice and palliative care services and business practices. The Blueprint has promoted the organization’s efficiency and outreach, and helped secure development funds to improve and expand hospice programs worldwide.
Dr. Schumacher, a globally recognized authority on hospice and palliative care, is a licensed clinical psychologist in New York and Massachusetts and holds a doctorate from the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, Boston, Massachusetts. In 2005, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he earned his M.S. degree in counseling psychology.
To learn more about NHPCO, click HERE!
© 2011 by On the Path Productions, LLC. All rights reserved.
Recent Comments