OK, you’ve made an appointment to see a cardiologist. You may have done this because your personal physician noticed some symptoms and recommended that you see a specialist about them, or simply because you realized that you were getting to the age at which you should have a thorough heart checkup. And naturally, if this is your first visit with a heart doctor, you might be a little apprehensive, and want to “study up” a little before meeting the doctor.
So you fire up Google and look up “heart disease” and find a bunch of terms like atherosclerosis and cardiomyopathy and myocarditis and atrial fibrillation and ventricular tachycardia. None of these terms mean anything to you, or help to reduce your apprehension, so you look up “heart disease diagnostic procedures” and you find other terms like electrocardiogram and echocardiogram and nuclear stress testing, and that doesn’t help much, either. So finally you look up “heart disease treatments,” and you find an even longer list of terms you don’t understand – cardiac catheterization, coronary angioplasty, coronary stenting, transradial catheterization, rotational atherectomy, and dozens of others.
At this point, your eyes glaze over and you give up. How on earth are you supposed to navigate such a maze of specialized terms and concepts as this?
Hint: You’re not…that’s what your cardiologist is for, to help you navigate
Yes, if you’re seeing a specialist in the field of heart disease and its treatment, you’d like to know more about it. But it’s a huge field, and in most cases a field in which most of the diseases and diagnostic techniques and invasive treatment methodologies don’t apply to you. It’s your cardiologist’s job – after a thorough examination and an analysis of your condition – to “filter out” the vast amount of information that doesn’t apply to you and present the information you need.
A good Delray Beach cardiologist helps you to navigate this ocean of information without having to learn everything about every wave. If your condition is fairly benign and all you really have to do to make your heart healthier is lose weight, stop smoking, eat a more heart-healthy diet, and get more exercise, that is the information that he will present to you. If your condition is more serious, and requires more precise and specialized information to understand the disorder and the various treatment options used to correct it, that is the information you need to “navigate” effectively.
Additional information IS out there, and in fact available on our website
If you are curious, and want to know more, the best heart doctors in Boynton Beach make that information is available to you in several ways. First, we provide a number of informative articles (including one on each of the terms used at the beginning of this article) on our website at www.southpalmcardiovascular.com, Or simply ask questions of your doctors whenever you meet with them. We’ll be happy to answer any questions, because that’s an important part of our job.
Effective heart treatment in Delray Beach is not about throwing terms at you that you don’t understand – it’s about patiently giving you the information you need to understand the nature of your treatment, and become comfortable with it.
No one knows how complex and confusing the maze of information surrounding the field of heart disease diagnosis and treatment is more than the professionals who staff South Palm Cardiovascular Associates. Each of us spent many, many years studying it to become certified in our medical specialties, and even more years expanding on that knowledge as the result of our medical practice. We do need to know all these terms, diagnostic techniques, and treatment options. But you don’t. What you need to know are the things necessary to help us help you either to remain healthy or to regain your heart health if it has become imperiled.
In a way, what your Boynton Beach cardiology specialists do for you is like the “Triptik” maps you used to get from the auto club before going on a long road trip. Yes, you got a map of the entire area you were driving through, but you also got a shorter, more precise map of exactly where you needed to go to reach your destination. These days, you’d rely on your GPS to achieve the same goal. You don’t need to know every back road along the way…what you need to know is how to get where you’re going as quickly and as safely as possible. If you’d like our help in providing such information about heart disease treatment, give us a call at 561-515-0080 and we’ll be happy to help you navigate.
