Queen’s Heart has been Hawai‘i’s leader in groundbreaking minimally invasive heart procedures that have restored the quality-of-life for many who were too frail for open-heart surgery. That leadership not only continues today, but is growing to add even more specialists and capabilities.
It started in 2012 with TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement) in the Queen’s Heart Valve & Structural Heart Program, which is now a part of a bigger umbrella department with added services called Cardiovascular Interventional & Surgical Services (CVISS), formed in 2016.
Queen’s Heart also encompasses the high tech invasive and non-invasive surgical suites at The Queen’s Medical Center (QMC) and Queen’s Heart Physician Practice (QHPP), which brings together board-certified, specialty-trained physicians and nurse practitioners to offer the most comprehensive, leading-edge cardiac and vascular care in Hawai‘i. QHPP has offices in the Physicians Office Building 3, in Aiea, and at QMC – West O‘ahu. Queen’s has over 20 cardiologists, an active medical staff, and the only cardiovascular disease teaching fellowship program in the state, which provides 24/7 coverage.
Queen’s Heart includes all things cardiology at QMC, QMC – West O‘ahu, North Hawai‘i Community Hospital, and The Queen’s Health Care Centers specialty clinics in Hilo and Kona on Hawai‘i Island.
New physicians came on board in the fall to pick up the mantel of leadership in cardiac innovation at Queen’s: Interventional Cardiologist Benjamin Plank, MD, cardiothoracic surgeons Peter Tsai, MD, and Eric Chung, MD, and thoracic surgeon Ayman Abdul-Ghani. “We are able to offer a full spectrum of structural heart procedures here, including less common interventions, and we have the infrastructure to support it,” says Dr. Plank. These include TAVR and MitraClip as in the past. (See below for available procedures.) Structural heart disease encompasses a full range of problems with the heart’s valves, walls, or muscles, or a combination of these. Queen’s will continue recruiting the most skilled physicians to grow its cardiac programs.
The CVISS specialists like Dr. Plank work alongside QHPP and community providers. Individuals can come to QHPP for general cardiac care, and if complex conditions develop, CVISS specialists are available with advanced skills and technologies found nowhere else in Hawai‘i. Thus, patients have a complete spectrum of cardiac care available to them for a lifetime.
“We have a tremendous opportunity to use what worked well in the past while doing some things differently to make the program even stronger than it is,” Dr. Plank says. Dr. Tsai notes that one big benefit to patients is that CVISS’s multidisciplinary team can perform more than one procedure for certain conditions together. In most hospitals, procedures need to be done separately. For example, if a patient has coronary arterial disease, the interventional cardiologist can stent the appropriate blood vessels, and a cardiac surgeon can perform a bypass simultaneously instead of having the patient come back for two procedures. Other conditions can be treated simultaneously by different specialists as well. “Very few programs in the country can do that,” says Dr. Tsai.
Whether it’s preventing heart disease or fixing what’s broken, Queen’s has the nation’s most advanced technologies and experts here in Hawai‘i. For more information, call CVISS at 808-691-8808. To make an appointment, call QHPP at 808-691-8900.
Cardiovascular Interventional & Surgical Services (CVISS)
INTERVENTIONS & SURGERIES
Diseases
- Coronary artery disease
- Aortic disease
- Valvular heart disease
- Structural heart disease
- Thoracic disease
- Peripheral artery disease
Interventional Cardiology Procedures
- Cardiac Catheterization
- PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention)
- BAV (Balloon Aortic Valvuloplasty)
- TAVR (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement)
- MitraClip (percutaneous mitral valve repair)
- PFO/ASD closure
Surgery
- Coronary artery bypass grafting
- Aortic valve repair and replacement
- Mitral valve repair and replacement
- Aortic repair
- Thoracic Surgery
- Vascular surgery
- Endovascular surgery
