UnityPoint Health - St. Luke's Heart Care Clinic

Living with heart failure? St. Luke’s Heart Failure Clinic offers the tools you need to feel better. We'll teach you how to recognize the signs and symptoms of heart failure so you can monitor yourself at home.

Part of St. Luke’s Heart Care Clinic, our providers help patients with heart failure reduce unnecessary visits to the emergency room, prevent hospitalization and live a more full and productive life.

Services

Heart failure is serious and requires immediate medical attention, but it shouldn't require frequent trips to the hospital. Our goal is to keep your heart healthy enough to manage problems before they become emergencies. To do this, we:

• Provide follow-up services to continue the care, education and encouragement you received during a hospital stay as you transition home. You'll see the same nurse practitioner who cared for you in the hospital.
• Help you better understand heart failure so you can monitor the signs and symptoms at home.
• Adjust medications to decrease symptoms and improve heart function.
• Closely evaluate your physical health and other factors that may be affecting how you feel.
• Communicate with your doctor and others on your healthcare team.
• Connect you with other healthcare resources, such as social workers, home care, pharmacists, exercise experts and counselors.
• Work closely with you and your family, offering longer appointments than a normal outpatient physician visit, to ensure you have the information you need and understand it.

How to Make an Appointment

Every patient hospitalized at St. Luke’s who has received a discharge diagnosis of heart failure is seen by Heart Failure Clinic staff three to five days after leaving the hospital. In addition, a doctor or cardiologist can refer patients to the Heart Failure Clinic for evaluation. If you think the clinic can help you, ask your attending doctor at the hospital or your primary care provider for a referral to St. Luke’s Heart Care Clinic.

Designed for patients with heart murmurs or heart valve diseases, the Heart Valve Clinic is a program that provides comprehensive diagnostics and customized treatment for valvular heart disease before it becomes serious or fatal. The Heart Valve Clinic is led by cardiologists who specialize in structural heart care and involves a multidisciplinary team of advanced practice providers, radiologists, general cardiologists, interventional cardiologists and heart surgeons.

Benefits & Services

• Nationally accredited imaging labs
• Treatment options such as medical therapy and anticoagulation medications
• Valve interventions including repair or replacement
• Second opinions concerning valve diagnoses, severity, timing and type of recommended interventions
• Continued follow-up care
• Patient and family education, support and care

How to Make an Appointment

To enlist the services of the Heart Valve team, talk to your primary care provider for a referral to St. Luke’s Heart Care Clinic.

Patients experiencing the following symptoms are ideal candidates for evaluation:

• Shortness of breath with activity
• Dizziness
• Chest pain
• Cardiac murmur
• Persistent fatigue