Contacts:

Tom Andrews
Media/Communications Specialist
The Wisconsin Heart Hospital
(414) 732-7371

Mary McIntosh
Director of Business Development
The Wisconsin Heart Hospital
414) 778-7810

LIMB SALVAGE PROGRAM EXPANDING AT THE WISCONSIN HEART HOSPITAL

TWHH Physicians Use Angioplasty To Reduce Lower Limb Amputations

Wauwatosa, WI  -  With the unmistakable link between cardiovascular disease and diabetes, The Wisconsin Heart Hospital is expanding its treatment program geared towards reducing one of the most severe complications suffered by diabetics: lower limb loss.  Timothy Tanke, M.D., a cardiologist with The Wisconsin Heart Hospital and the Wisconsin Heart and Vascular Clinics physician group, and his colleagues have been targeting efforts to help this patient population. Dr. Tanke helped institute a similar program at the University of Wisconsin Hospitals several years ago and achieved remarkable results. The UW program reduced the amputation rate among patients by 75 percent.

“We do a lot of re-building of the arteries below the knee in an effort to prevent people from having amputations or at least limited amputations,” said Tanke. “Rather than losing a leg below the knee, perhaps the patient would lose only half their foot or some toes. That’s substantially different because now the patient can still walk without a prosthetic device. Basically, we’re performing angioplasty below the knee and opening up chronically plugged up blood vessels in an effort to restore blood flow below the knee. This type of procedure is particularly beneficial to people with bad vascular disease and almost exclusively in the diabetic population. Over half of the amputations that occur are in diabetics.”

According to the American Diabetes Association, Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) affects 12 million people in the United States. PAD is a condition characterized by atherosclerotic occlusive disease of the lower extremities and it is a major risk factor for lower-extremity amputation. It is also accompanied by a high likelihood for symptomatic cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease. Data from the Framingham Heart Study revealed that 20 percent of patients with PAD had diabetes but it is believed this statistic greatly underestimates the true number because most people with PAD have no symptoms.

The most common symptom of PAD is intermittent claudication, defined as pain, cramping or aching in the calves, thighs or buttocks that appears with walking exercise but is relieved by rest. More extreme presentations of PAD include rest pain, tissue loss or gangrene. These limb-threatening manifestations of PAD are collectively termed “critical limb ischemia” (CLI).

The American Diabetes Association also reports that the most life-threatening consequences of diabetes are heart disease and stroke, which strike people with diabetes more than twice as often as they do others. Most of the cardiovascular complications related to diabetes have to do with the way the heart pumps blood through the body. Diabetes can change the chemical makeup of some of the substances found in the blood and this can cause blood vessels to narrow or to clog up completely. More than 65 percent of deaths in diabetes patients are attributed to heart and vascular disease.

About The Wisconsin Heart Hospital

An exciting, new era in the delivery of specialized cardiovascular care arrived in Wisconsin with the opening of The Wisconsin Heart Hospital (TWHH) at 10000 West Blue Mound Road (across from the Milwaukee County Zoo) in Wauwatosa, WI. The new hospital officially opened its doors on January 26.

The partnership between cardiovascular, specialty physicians, the community, investors and Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare. has produced a 60-bed specialized care hospital dedicated to providing advanced and innovative cardiovascular medical and surgical services delivered in a unique acute-care and ambulatory setting. Offering a true patient and family-centered experience, TWHH’s facility design complements the evolving future of ambulatory cardiovascular care. The model was designed to improve upon conventional treatment paradigms and deliver a highly focused process resulting in:

• Shortened treatment times
• Reduced probability of higher procedure complexity
• Avoidance of post-procedural complications
• Hastened return of the patient to normal day-to-day activities

For more information, please visit www.thewisconsinhearthospital.com

About Wisconsin Heart and Vascular Clinics
Wisconsin Heart and Vascular Clinics, S.C. , a pioneering group of physicians and other health care personnel, offers comprehensive cardiac and peripheral vascular medicine and has been setting the standards for cardiac care in southeastern Wisconsin for more than 25 years. Its founding physicians helped place Milwaukee on the cardiac care map in the mid-1970s when they pioneered minimally invasive alternatives to open heart surgery. They were the first physicians in southeastern Wisconsin to:

• Perform balloon angioplasties of heart, arm and leg arteries
• Perform valvuloplasty, the non-surgical repair of a narrowed heart valve
• Use a laser to open blocked coronary arteries
• Use a stent to open blocked coronary arteries
• Perform non-surgical repair of abdominal aortic aneurysms using a stent

Once revolutionary, these techniques are now standard practice.Visit our Award Winning Website at: http://www.whvc.org

( # # # )

(Editor’s Note: To arrange for interviews and/or video or photo opportunities regarding the Limb Salvage program, please contact either Tom Andrews or Mary McIntosh as noted above.)

The Wisconsin Heart Hospital – The New Direction in Heart Care