New Vascular Center At Penrose Hospital

by: Nina Sparano (n.sparano@krdo.com)

COLORADO SPRINGS – The brand new $11millionaddition at Penrose Hospital isn’t just bigger and better, its saving more lives every day.

The Vascular Center at Penrose started out as 8,000 square feet of office space. Its now 22,000 sq .ft. of wide open space filled withbrand new technology.

The newcenter is now giving world class cardiac care to Southern Colorado patients.

Michael Eglinton is the Clinical Director at Penrose. “I believe it is a better quality of care to the patients because it’s a better state of the art facility,” He says.

There are now75 certified physicians, registered nursesX-ray experts and registered cardiovascular technicians, thatare accessible around the clock. This space isn’t just bigger its more efficient.

“We are in much closer proximity to the E. R. via non-stop elevator and we sit right below the helipad,” says Eglinton.

One of the life saving benefits of the new heart institute is that a flight for life patient can head straight from the helipad,to the elevator and into the vascular center. Saving 10 to 15 minutes and that could save a lot of lives.

The center is also host to a new electro physiology lab that can treat the most complicated heart cases. By using the new Carto-Sound System, only the 2nd of its kind in the country, doctors can literally look inside your heart with the use of 3-d images.

Dr. Chris Coleis an Electro physiologist and one of the leaders in brining this technology to Colorado Springs.

“It uses ultra sound images. So we have the ultrasound images of the heart so we can put these together in a three dimensional anatomy, so we can see everything inside of the heart.”

Problems such as Cardiac Arrhythmia, can be treated using this virtual reality map of the heart. They can see the problem in real time, and fix it. All without exposing the patient to X-rays.

“With this new facility we are going to be more efficient in being able to bring patients into the facility and get them treated and get them home,” says Dr. Cole.