Ashish Shah Archives

Sourav Panja, PhD, underwent a complicated procedure at VUMC to treat his relatively rare form of pulmonary hypertension.

Technique helped treat patient’s rare pulmonary disorder

Sep. 10, 2020—Sourav Panja, PhD, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was working in his lab one evening last year when he began coughing up blood. Even breathing was becoming difficult.

Ventricular assist device program hits major milestone

May. 6, 2020—VHVI’s cardiac surgery and heart failure teams recently celebrated a milestone — implanting the 500th adult patient with a ventricular assist device.

VUMC’s ECMO program has expanded to areas outside of the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit.

ECMO team to help other providers create their own programs

Mar. 12, 2020—VUMC has signed an agreement with Ballad Health, a regional health system serving East Tennessee and Southwest Virginia, to train its team to provide a life-saving medical program called ECMO.

VUMC uses novel transplant technique to revive donor hearts that had stopped beating

Feb. 28, 2020—In the first such procedures in Tennessee, Vanderbilt University Medical Center has successfully used technology to bring two donor hearts that stopped beating back to life before transplanting them into patients.

VUMC tops in nation for number of heart transplants performed last year

Jan. 16, 2020—Vanderbilt University Medical Center tied for first place as the busiest heart transplant program by volume in the United States in 2019.

ECMO program expanding to more intensive care units

Sep. 12, 2019—VUMC is expanding its ECMO program from its longtime home in the Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit (CVICU) to the Medical (MICU) and Trauma Intensive Care units.

More congenital heart patients becoming transplant candidates

May. 2, 2019—Patients with a form of congenital heart disease — having only one ventricle (pumping chamber) — are now living longer lives due to the successful surgical and medical treatments they receive as children.

Tim Lowell, here with his wife, Ginger, was Tennessee’s first total artificial heart transplant patient. He recently received a permanent donor heart.

First artificial heart patient gets permanent replacement

Mar. 28, 2019—Tim Lowell of Hernando, Mississippi, received the first total artificial heart in the state of Tennessee when the cardiac surgery team at Vanderbilt Health placed the device in his chest on Sept. 26, 2018. The mechanical heart kept him alive for nearly three months until a matching human donor heart became available and he was transplanted on Dec. 16, 2018, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Vanderbilt implants Tennessee’s first artificial heart

Sep. 27, 2018—by Craig Boerner Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Cardiac Surgery Team performed Tennessee’s first total artificial heart implantation Wednesday, Sept. 26, on a 56-year-old man with congestive heart failure. The team used a SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, a mechanical solution for a patient’s failing heart, whereby surgeons completely remove the patient’s heart and replace it with...