Heart Treatments

Your treatment plan may include medication, minimally invasive surgery, device therapy or open-heart surgery.

Medical Therapy 

The latest medications available are often used in conjunction with other therapies for treatment of conditions such as congestive heart failure.

Minimally Invasive Surgery

Angioplasty is a mininmally invasive procedures in which a catheter intersted into the artery removes blockages that are reducing blood flow. Several approaches are available including balloon angioplasty or placement of a stent.

Implantation of a pacemaker or a defibrillator can benefit people with heartbeat irregularities that can't be managed by medications.

Surgical Solutions

When coronary arteries are severely blocked, bypass surgery may be recommended.

Open-heart surgery has been performed at Gottlieb since 1988. Our group of heart surgeons--Cardiothoracic & Vascular Surgical Associates--performs more than 1,800 open-heart operations every year at Gottlieb and four other Chicago area hospitals combined. That makes them one of the largest heart programs in the Chicago area.

And despite taking on the most difficult cases--those that ordinarily end up in a university medical center operating room--their outcomes place them among the best heart surgeons in the nation.

Coronary artery bypass surgery involves transplanting a healthy blood vessel from another part of the body to the heart to replace or bypass a diseased vessel.

Valve replacement may involve either repair or replacement of defective or diseased heart valves. Specialized diagnostic techniques, such as echocardiography, are used to evaluate patients with valve disease.