The Heart & Vascular Institute at Commonwealth Health focuses on the functions and disorders of the heart and its connected circulatory system. According to the American Heart Association, 84 million people in the U.S. suffer from some form of cardiovascular disease, affecting blood flow throughout the body. Cardiovascular disease can lead to heart attacks, strokes or other serious complications.

Taking good care of your heart can help reduce your risk of developing heart disease. Cardiac care teams provide heart care services from helping you create a heart-healthy lifestyle to performing potentially lifesaving procedures in emergency situations..

Commonly treated heart-related conditions seen by the cardiovascular team at Regional Hospital of Scranton and Wilkes-Barre General Hospital include:

• Coronary artery disease – an accumulation of fatty deposits in the coronary arteries. These deposits narrow the arteries and can decrease or block the flow of blood to the heart.
• Congestive heart failure – a condition where blood flowing through the heart and body slows while pressure in the heart increases; as a result, the heart cannot pump enough oxygen and nutrients to meet the body’s needs; the kidneys may respond by retaining water and salt creating a fluid build-up and the body becomes congested.
• Rhythm abnormalities – arrhythmia is an abnormal heart rhythm that can cause problems with the contractions of your heart chambers.
• Peripheral vascular disease – any disease or disorder of the circulatory system outside of the brain and heart, which includes any blood vessels; the most common disease of the arteries is caused by fatty material building up inside the vessels (atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries).
• Structural heart disease – a general term that covers non-coronary cardiac disease processes and interventional techniques; this includes cardiac defects that may be congenital (birth defects), as well as abnormalities of the valves and vessels of the heart wall that develop as the result of wear and tear on the heart or from disease.
• Valvular heart disease – damage or defect affecting one of the four heart valves: the mitral, aortic, tricuspid or pulmonary; the mitral and tricuspid valves control the flow of blood between the upper and lower chambers of the heart.