Love Your Heart: A Cleveland Clinic Podcast

After a webchat on heart failure treatments, Dr. Maria Mountis, heart failure cardiologist and Dr. Edward Soltesz, Surgical Director of the Kaufman Center for Heart Failure and Recovery discussed topics that were addressed during the chat including heart failure medications, cardioMEMs monitoring, when patients are considered for advanced therapies, what patients should know about heart transplant or ventricular assist devices, and high risk heart surgery for patients with heart failure.

Dr. Steven Nissen discusses pericardial disease with Dr. Allan Klein, Director of the Cleveland Clinic Pericardial Disease Center – including different types of pericardial disease (such as pericarditis and recurrent pericarditis), common symptoms, diagnostic testing, medications used to treat pericarditis and when surgery is used.

After a webchat, Dr. Eric Roselli, Director of the Aorta Center and vascular surgeon Dr. F. Ezequiel Parodi discuss the most common questions about aorta disease: what type of activity can I do? What type of testing should I have and how often? When should I have surgery? What type of treatment should I have?

Dr. Steven Nissen talks to cardiologist Dr. Sagar Kalahasti, Director of the Marfan & Connective Tissue Clinic and surgeon Dr. Eric Roselli, Director of the Aorta Center about aorta disease: follow-up, typed of testing, when to have surgery and what patients should know about life-long care.

Dr. Luke Laffin, staff cardiologist in Preventive Cardiology and Clinical Specialist in Hypertension at Cleveland Clinic answers questions that patients often ask about taking high blood pressure medicines: types of medications, side effects, when to call the doctor, role of self-blood pressure monitoring (including how often), the best time to take blood pressure medications, and if there is a chance that patients can come off medications. He ends the program with three important points for patients with high blood pressure.

After a webchat, Dr. Harry Lever, Director of the Cleveland Clinic’s Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Center, reviewed common questions that patients asked about diagnostic testing, symptoms, when a patient needs surgery for HCM (myectomy and/or mitral valve repair), and genetic testing.

Dr. Steven Nissen talks with electrophysiologist Khaldoun Tarakji, MD, MPH, , Director of the Heart & Vascular Institute’s Center for Digital Health Technologies, about the essentials of wearable digital devices for people with heart disease, such as smartphone- and smartwatch-connected heart rhythm monitors.

Cleveland Clinic heart surgeon Per Wierup, MD, PhD, explains how robots are used in heart surgery, what types of surgery robots can assist with and how patients are evaluated for robotic heart surgery. He also shares how hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (another of his specialties) is treated with heart surgery.