Cardiac Institute

The Florida Hospital Altamonte Cardiac Institute brings together the resources, expertise and capabilities in the area of heart disease to better meet the needs of Seminole County.  We're able to offer a full array of cardiology services provided by a team of highly skilled cardiologists and clinicians. Our goal is to deliver excellent patient care through several key cardiac and diagnostic services.

Cardiology tests and procedures

Your cardiac workup will most likely be initiated in your doctor's office, or in an emergency room. Your physician will ask some questions about your symptoms, and then perform a physical examination. If there is suspicion of heart disease, the doctor asks for tests that can help exclude or make a diagnosis of a specific heart disease.

Three common tests obtained in the early phase of your evaluation are an EKG (also known as ECG or electrocardiogram), a chest x-ray and a blood test.

At Florida Hospital Altamonte, our services include these tests and procedures that help your doctor evaluate and treat your heart condition. These tests include procedures done our new Cardiac Catheterization Lab such as catheterizations, balloon angioplasties and electrophysiology studies. This state-of-the-art lab offers superior diagnostic and interventional procedures with faster, more reliable diagnostic results through:

• Echocardiography-often referred to by medical professionals as a cardiac ECHO or simply an ECHO, this diagnostic tool is a sonogram of the heart. Also known as a cardiac ultrasound, it uses standard ultrasound techniques to image two-dimensional slices of the heart.
• EKG or ECG-short for Electrocardiography, this noninvasive test looks at the electrical activity of the heart over time, recorded outside the body through the use of skin electrodes.
• Nuclear imaging-a method of producing images from different parts of the body after a radioactive "tracer" material is given. These tracers are not dyes or medicines and have no side effects; and the amount of radiation a patient receives tends to be very low.
• Stress testing-used to provide information about how the heart responds to exertion. It usually involves walking on a treadmill at increasing levels of difficulty, while your electrocardiogram, heart rate, and blood pressure are monitored.
• Peripheral vessel balloon angioplasty-a technique of mechanically widening a narrowed or obstructed blood vessel, typically as a result of atherosclerosis. Tightly folded balloons are passed into the narrowed locations and then inflated. This procedure is typically minimally invasive.

We are the first accredited Chest Pain Center in Seminole County.

Only a little more than 400 hospitals in the US can claim this title. But just what does "Chest Pain Center" accreditation mean to the residents of our county?

Here's why it's important: five million Americans arrive in hospital emergency departments each year with chest pain. Yet only 15 percent of those actually have an acute myocardial infarction. So being able to quickly and accurately determine the cause of a patient's pain is critical to deciding on a treatment -and critical to patient outcomes.

Offering new ways to provide the best patient care was the driving force behind Florida Hospital Altamonte's goal to establish an accredited Chest Pain Center. With our designated resources of personnel, space and equipment for these patients, we've improved the process of specialized cardiac care.

Visit Florida Hospital Cardiovascular Institute for more informatin or call us today at 407-303-2200.