Cardiac Imaging

By Trish Bergin

     Hello all my tech friends.  I'm blogging for Elizabeth Hashagen while she is away on maternity leave.  I'm not the most tech oriented person, but I still find some of this stuff to be reallly cool.

     So check this out.  I was at Long Island Jewish Medical Center this week, checking out this new machine that they just got.  This new imaging procedure helps the Cardiologists there to see INSIDE your heart.  They use this new technology to create a 3-D image of your heart.  This allows doctors to get a better understanding of the "electrical system" in your heart. 

When I say "Electrical system," I'm talking about the way the heart beats, and sends blood flowing through all 4 chambers.                               

When the heart's two small upper chambers quiver instead of beating effectively, it is called atrial fibrillation. It's a serious problem that the American Heart Association says can sometimes lead to a stroke.

     This new technology is helping doctors better detect and fix this condition.

This is what Vice President Dick Cheney was diagnosed with in November of last year.  But the problem can often be fixed, by burning the spots in the heart's chambers that are misfiring.  It was really cool to see how this 3-D imaging could calculate where the heart is misfiring. 

     Oh, and a quick Thank you to Dr. David Slotwiner, the cardiologist at LIJ, who so patiently explained all this latest technology and science to THIS English major!