Ochsner LSU Health - Heart & Vascular Institute

About the Heart & Vascular Institute

We provide personalized care for conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels. We offer personalized and streamlined adult care for conditions that affect the heart and blood vessels. Our clinic offers access to a multitude of cardiology specialties and subspecialties, including general cardiology, interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, heart failure, structural heart disease, congenital, & pregnancy related conditions.

Our advanced in-hospital Interventional Cardiology Suite lets us perform minimally invasive procedures, which involve lower risk, less pain and faster recovery for you compared to traditional surgeries. These procedures let us better treat a wide range of heart and vascular conditions, including coronary artery disease, which is a major cause of heart problems. We also have an in-hospital electrophysiology lab, which lets us diagnose and treat abnormal heartbeats (arrhythmias) and other issues with the heart’s electrical system.

Our advanced technology allows us to use image-guided therapy, which lets us perform both routine and complex procedures more easily and effectively.

Our Heart and Vascular Services

The following are just some of the many cardiovascular tests, treatments and procedures we offer:

• Balloon angioplasty, which involves widening a blocked blood vessel with a specialized balloon
• Cardiothoracic surgery, including working with our electrophysiologist to perform a convergence procedure (used to treat an irregular heartbeat known as atrial fibrillation or AFib)
• Comprehensive testing for and management of advanced heart failure, including outpatient diuresis (a therapy used to ease swelling and water buildup caused by heart failure)
• Diagnostic catheterizations, in which we pass a thin, flexible tube called a catheter into your blood vessels to diagnose conditions
• Implantable devices, such as pacemakers (devices to help control abnormal heart rhythms), defibrillators (devices that use electric shocks to restore normal heart rhythms) and loop recorders (devices that monitor the heartbeat and record potential abnormal heart rhythms)
• Outpatient echocardiograms, which use ultrasound to show the function of your heart and its valves
• Outpatient stress testing, which show how well your heart and blood vessels work during exercise
• Stenting, which involves implanting a tube into one of your blood vessels to keep the vessel open
• TAVR (transcatheter aortic valve replacement), a minimally invasive procedure to replace a valve in the heart if it doesn’t open properly
• Tilt-table testing, which can help your doctor rule in or rule out heart conditions as a potential cause of syncope (fainting)
• Various cardiac ablation procedures to correct abnormal electrical signals within the heart
• Watchman left atrial appendage closure device, which we can use to reduce blood clots and lower the risk of stroke if you have AFib

Learn more about our cardiology care