Newsletter Winter 2001

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The Heart of the Matter (The Heart Center)
Bill Asplund Shares His Shape-Up Story
Bill Asplund's Dietician's Point of View
Welcome New Physicians and Clinicians

The Heart of the Matter

“On June 30, 1999 I woke up in the middle of the night feeling weird,” recalls Frank Files. “For some reason I thought if I went back to sleep, I would die. I woke up my wife and we went to the hospital.”

That night marked the beginning of a new chapter in the lives of Frank and Elaine Files. Tests revealed five blockages in his heart arteries. “Suddenly I found myself in an ambulance on my way to Seattle for open heart surgery at Swedish Hospital.”

It was to be the first of many trips for the Wenatchee residents to Seattle, and even San Diego, for treatment.

Fast forward to October, 2000. Steve Eng, a forty-five year old accountant at Cordell, Neher, and Co. thinks he has a touch of the flu, and his back is killing him. He is, in fact, suffering from congestive heart failure. By the time he arrives in the emergency room, he is going into shock. A strep infection has damaged his aortic valve, and his heart is failing. Open heart surgery is imperative, and luck is on Steve’s side. Cardiovascular surgeon Dr. John Rowles replaces the damaged heart valve within hours of Steve’s arrival into the emergency room.

Steve Eng puts it in perspective. “It saved my life -- I couldn’t have made it anywhere else in time.”

While Frank Files and Steve Eng had very different heart problems, they both required immediate open heart surgery. When Frank needed surgery, he had no choice but to travel. For Steve, the life-saving option had just become available as part of the new Heart Center.

The Heart Center is a teaming of Wenatchee Valley Clinic, Central Washington Hospital and a cardiovascular surgery practice in Spokane. Two of the Clinic’s seven Cardiologists, Dr. William Murray and Dr. Geoffrey Harms, see patients in offices right next to the hospital, a space they share with Cardiovascular Surgeon John Rowles. Dr. Rowles is a member of the cardiovascular surgery practice in Spokane – the group has a contract with the hospital. While Dr. Rowles is the surgeon on site, he consults with the other Cardiovascular Surgeons in his group, and they are available when he’s away from the hospital.

Having heart surgery available allows other cardiac procedures to be performed in Wenatchee. You’ve probably heard of angioplasty, where a balloon is inserted into the artery, then inflated and deflated a few times to compress the plaque against the artery wall in order to widen the artery. The procedure wasn’t available in Wenatchee until we had a heart surgeon.

“The capability of doing interventional cardiology like angioplasty was here, but you don’t do the procedures without open heart surgery available,” explains Dr. Harms, who comes to the Clinic with ten years of interventional experience. “There’s a 2-4 % chance that an artery might tear up or close during angioplasty or stent [where a small metal coil or mesh tube is placed in the narrowed artery to hold the passageway open]. It’s rare, but it ha