Mercy Health Offers Non Surgical Treatment for Angina

Mercy Health - Cincinnati, which provides advanced, quality care with compassion in your neighborhood through its care network, announces that Mercy Health Physician and cardiologist Vansh Puri, MD can offer patients with angina a non-surgical treatment option with long-term results.

Heart diseases that narrow or block the arteries feeding blood to the heart can lead to a condition called ischemia, which in turn can cause symptoms such as angina (chest pain), shortness of breath and fatigue that impact a person’s ability to carry out daily activities.

Treatment options include bypass surgery, a minimally-invasive balloon angioplasty or drug therapy to restore normal blood flow and relieve symptoms. However, there are patients who are not candidates for the procedures or for whom the medication has not improved their symptoms.

“Enhanced external counter-pulsation (EECP) therapy, which is non-surgical, can help patients who can’t have invasive procedures or haven’t benefited from medication and need relief from angina pain,” says Dr. Puri.

EECP therapy uses three sets of blood pressure-like cuffs wrapped around the legs and the buttocks that inflate and deflate together with the patient’s heartbeat to increase blood flow and oxygen to the patient’s heart and other organs. It can help unblock small blood vessels near the heart and create natural bypass around narrowed or blocked arteries. The increased blood flow helps ease the chest pain.

Patients undergoing EECP therapy typically have treatments for one hour each day, five days a week, for a total of 35 hours. During the treatment, patients lie down on a comfortable treatment table as the cuffs inflate and deflate at specific times between their heartbeats.

“EECP therapy can help patients with hard to treat heart disease,” says Dr. Puri. “Between 70-80% of patients completing the full course of therapy will experience relief of their symptoms and a subsequent improvement in their activity levels. The results can last up to two years.”

Dr. Puri is part of The Heart Institute at Mercy Health, which offers integrated care to help patients prevent, manage, treat and recover from heart disease.

He practices from the following locations:

• Mercy Health - The Heart Institute, Anderson, 7502 State Road, Suite 2210A, Cincinnati, OH 45255, 513-624-2070  
• Mercy Health - The Heart Institute, Adams County, 230 Medical Center Drive, Seaman, OH 45679, 937-386-3420  
• Mercy Health - The Heart Institute, Clermont, 2055 Hospital Drive, Suite 340, Batavia, OH 45103, 513-735-7872