Cardiologists Leaving Private Practices for Hospitals

FOX News recently visited Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center to learn more about the growing trend of cardiologists leaving private practices to work for hospitals. Lourdes chief of cardiothoracic surgery, Dr. Art Martella, as well as health system President and CEO, Alexander Hatala and interventional cardiologist, Dr. Audrey Sernyak were featured in this hot topic article and video segment.

To view the article, please click here:

A change of heart: Cardiologists leaving private practices for hospitals

To watch the video, please click here:

Health care system in cardiac arrest?

Colorectal Cancer: Preventable! Treatable! Beatable!

Learn about Colorectal Cancer from Lourdes Medical Associates'
Colorectal and GI Physicians.

Diabetes Meal Planning Basics
2012 Classes

Endocrinology Associates

740 Marne Highway, Suite 206
Moorestown, NJ 08057

Speaker:
Cathy Wright, BSN, RN, CDE
Certified Diabetes Educator

CLICK HERE to download flyer.

Why Heart Doctors are Leaving Practice to Work for Hospitals

By Stacey Burling, Inquirer Staff Writer

Insecurity about falling insurance payments and the impact of impending health-care
changes are driving droves of cardiologists - among the highest-paid doctors - to leave
private practice and become hospital employees.

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Some Cases of Acid Reflux May Be
Another Condition

Health Check, Action News

CLICK HERE to read the article featuring Dr. Berberian

Congrats to Dr. Blaber on his South Jersey Magazine Man of the Year recognition!

Men Of The Year 2011

by Editorial Staff--South Jersey Magazine

DR. REGINALD BLABER

A cardiologist with Lourdes Health System, Blaber is also the president of Lourdes Medical Associates, a network of more than 70 physicians at more than 30 practice sites throughout South Jersey. Since joining Lourdes in 1988, Blaber has held several leadership positions, is highly regarded as a heart failure specialist, and is board certified in both cardiology and internal medicine. Blaber achieved the rank of major in the U.S. Army Medical Corps and also serves as clinical instructor of internal medicine and cardiology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey.

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Women in Medicine

By Sally Friedman ? Photography by David Michael Howarth, SJ Magazine

Michele Lanza, APN-C
Primary Care Nurse Practitioner
Lourdes Medical Associates

Day after day, nurse practitioner Michele Lanza was seeing patients burdened with stress. "They weren't coming in for that, they were coming in because they had a sore throat or stomach problems," she says, "but when I took a minute and asked how they were, they broke down. Because of the economy, so many people are stressed and depressed, and that has its affects on the body."

Lanza's recognition of her patients' anxiety levels caused her to develop a special interest in stress and its harm to the body. She attended a week-long intensive training program on treating the physical affects of stress in Boston with Harvard doctors, and now uses her knowledge to help her patients.

"It's really fascinating," she says. "Research shows that stress changes the expression of your DNA, and that change can be for good or for bad. I work with my patients to identify their stress, and then help them cope with it either with medication or without. I believe in anti-depressants when they are appropriate, but I also provide information on other options when a patient asks.

"Most patients want to be well and stay well," Lanza adds. "Sometimes, they just need someone to help them do that."

CLICK HERE to read this entire article.

Healthy Hospitals

By Heather Morse, SJ Magazine

From expansions to high-tech upgrades, SJ hospitals have continued to improve services and stay competitive amid the rapid changes affecting the healthcare field.

Over the past year, local medical facilities have made a wide range of developments designed to meet rising demands and successfully compete for patients. Combined with innovative procedures and specialized care options, they've solidified...

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Congratulations Top Docs of 2011!

Transplant Program Promotes
Positive Outcomes?No Need to Cross Delaware River
By Josh Bernstein, Staff Writer, This Week @ Lourdes

Donor Provides Gift of Life to Friends
Michael Santiago and Vanessa Coursey could have carpooled to Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center on July 31. The two long- time friends from Millville, Cumberland County unknowingly each received a phone call that a donor kidney was available. Only after the surgeries did the two find each other in the hospital and discover they shared the same donor.

"It's special both of our kidneys came from the same donor and we know each other," said Santiago, 49, a college security guard. "We had the same problem and now we have the same solution."

"We bonded, buddy," joked Coursey, 54, a housekeeper. "I'm going to have to call you up every day."

The two friends suffered from chronic kidney disease?Coursey due to long-term high blood pressure and Santiago from a serious infection caused by E. coli. In addition, each has a rare O-negative blood type, which can increase the wait time for transplantation. They had been waiting for four years.

Lourdes transplant surgeon Ely Sebastian, MD, was amazed by the coincidence. "It's not unusual for several organs to come from one donor," in this case a 29-year-old female accident victim, said Dr. Sebastian. "It is not common for two friends to each get a kidney from the same donor."

"This is a gift," echoed transplant nephrologist Arijit Chakravarty, MD, medical director of Lourdes' Kidney and Pancreas Transplant Program. "We often take the credit as doctors, but there's something else to explain this."

It will take about six months for Santiago and Coursey to fully recover. They look forward to taking advantage of their new chances at life. Santiago wants to run a marathon while Coursey looks forward to caring for new granddaughter?born the same day she received her new kidney.

Couple Share Ocean, Love and Kidney
Kip and Gena Murray can finally swim in the ocean. The Ocean City couple has been out of the water since July, when Gena donated one of her kidneys to her husband.

A 50-year-old surfer, Kip Murray was diagnosed with kidney disease 12 years ago. Last year, it became apparent that he would need a transplant and Gina decided to get tested. While the Murrays share the same blood type, due to advances in technology, donors and recipients do not have to be blood relatives or exact matches in order for the transplant to work, according to Dr. Chakravarty.

Both Murrays soon will return to work at the Borgata casino.

Paired Exchange Becomes Growing Trend

Paired exchange offers new life-saving options to those seeking a kidney transplant, but whose potential living donor is not a good biological match due to either blood type or cross-match incompatibility. This option allows incompatible donors to help their loved ones to receive a living donor kidney by matching one incompatible donor/recipient pair with another incompatible pair. In kidney swap chains, a number of willing donors exchange kidneys to recipients, thus increasing the number of life-saving surgeries being performed at the same time. Living donor kidney transplants have better outcomes, less rejection and are longer-lasting, making them preferable to deceased-donor transplants.

Riverton Goes Pink for Breast Cancer

By Jeannie O'Sullivan, Staff Writer, PhillyBurbs.com

RIVERTON - Pink ribbons, netting and balloons festooned the borough's elegant porches Sunday as part of the fight against breast cancer.
The theme spilled onto the streets, where people and pets donned rosy-hued garb, feathers, flowers, tiaras and hair dye. Pink flamingo hats, tutu-clad Great Danes and entire families bearing face paint were just a few of the sights...

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Doctors Discover More People Developing Food Allergies
That Present Like Asthma

Reported By Lynne Adkins, KYW Newsradior, CBSPhilly.com

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) ? If you're having a tough time swallowing that chicken dinner, it may not be the cooking but could be an allergy.
Dr. Brian Berberian, a gastroenterologist at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden calls it asthma of the esophagus...

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PillCam is the wave of the future

By PEG QUANN, Staff Writer, PhillyBurbs.com

BORDENTOWN TOWNSHIP - With a sip of water and a swallow, Hudson Millar of Evesham recently got to see a view of himself he'd never seen before: His insides.
Millar ingested a tiny camera called the PillCam. It's about the size of a large multivitamin.
"It was a piece of cake. Easy," he said.
Dr. Donald Petroski, a gastroenterologist with Lourdes Medical Associates, had Millar swallow the device to determine the cause of a bleeding problem.
"This allows a noninvasive means of studying the small intestine," Petroski said.

Millar, who takes blood thinners for a heart condition, had a routine physical weeks before...

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Digital Mammography Suite Unveiled at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center

An unveiling and dedication ceremony was recently held for the new digital mammography unit at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center. At the unveiling, Dr. Kathleen V. Greatrex, chief of Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center (pictured), spoke of the importance of the new state-of-the-art technology to the hospital and community. The Lourdes Health Foundation raised $350,000 for the unit, thanks to support from grants as well as individual donations.

Article and photo provided by Our Lady of Lourdes

Acupuncture & Diabetes
By Cathleen J. Wright, MS, LAc, DiplAc (NCCAOM), BSN, RN, CDE

Cathy Wright, RN, CDE at Endocrinology Associates recently published an article on the benefits of acupuncture and diabetes. The piece, found at nursing.advanceweb.com, discusses how combining biomedicine with Oriental medicine can improve clinical markers and quality of life for those with diabetes. In the article Cathy finds that acupuncture as a complementary therapy to biomedical treatment of diabetes may in fact result in reduced glucose levels.

Cathy?s article is now available online at: nursing.advanceweb.com

'Kidney swap chain' a first for S.J.

Reprinted from Courier-Post Online.. April 24, 2010

CAMDEN ? South Jersey surgeons have completed the area's first "kidney swap chain," taking part in a series of transplants involving four donors and four recipients in three states.

"It's really kind of a miracle," said Wendy Marano, a spokeswoman for Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center, about the complicated procedure that took place at the Camden hospital.
Hospitals in North Jersey, New York and Massachusetts also participated in Monday's swap chain.

Marano said the procedure provides an increasingly attractive option for the patient who has a willing kidney donor, but who can't accept the organ due to a compatibility problem.
Essentially, a computer program reviews other cases to find a patient who can take that kidney -- and whose own donor is compatible with the first patient.

Monday's procedure took this exchange to a higher level, by matching four donors and recipients, Marano explained.

"The surgeries took place simultaneously," she observed. "Then they put the organs on planes and flew them to the waiting recipients."

The names of the patients and donors are not being released, Marano said. She identified the donor and recipient at Lourdes only as "a closely related pair from South Jersey."

Both were recuperating well and are expected to be released in a day or two, hospital officials said Wednesday.

"When it came together, it felt great all day," said Donna Collins, a pre-transplant coordinator. "We had no glitches. Everything went very smoothly."

"People are going to be seeing this more and more," predicted Marano, who said a swap can shorten the wait for a transplant. Hospital officials also said kidneys from living donors offer better outcomes for patients coping with chronic kidney disease or those who require dialysis.

The swap was especially gratifying to the Lourdes team because the local recipient was receiving her second kidney transplant. Finding a suitable match had been complicated due to antibodies in her system from pregnancy and the previous transplant.

"The opportunity for her to find a match was really exciting," said Karen Malagrino, also a pre-transplant coordinator.

In addition to Lourdes, the other hospitals involved in the swap were St. Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, Essex County; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston; and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Concord, N.H.

Last year, roughly 12,000 people were on a waiting list for a kidney transplant in the region encompassing New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia.

More than 3,000 kidney transplants were performed in that region, according to Lourdes. Last fall, a medical team performed a successful kidney swap for two married couples, one from Williamstown and the other from the New York City area.

Organ procurement organizations, such as the New Jersey Sharing Network, were a critical player in Monday's operation, providing expertise and packaging the kidneys for medical transport.

Wilford S. Shamlin
wshamlin@courierpostonline.com