In 2018, Ronnie Kreis began to develop severe heart failure. After being hospitalized multiple times that year near his home in Oliver Springs in East Tennessee, he was told that nothing else could be done.

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

In February, Martha Hawks became the Southeast’s first recipient of the Medtronic Micra AV, the latest version of the tiny pacemaker that Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute began testing in a clinical trial in 2014. The FDA approved the latest device in January.

Dan Roden, MD, and Daniel Munoz, have been named interim directors of the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

Colin Barker, MD, a national leader in percutaneous heart valve therapies, has joined Vanderbilt University Medical Center as the new director of Interventional Cardiology. He began seeing patients July 2.

Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute is now offering a new procedure that reduces stroke risk for many high-risk patients during interventions for extracranial carotid disease

For the first time in 27 years, Jerry Flowers is looking at life without using blood thinners, thanks to a small device that was implanted in his heart in a clinical trial at Vanderbilt Heart and Vascular Institute (VHVI).