The Jordan Hospital Cardiovascular Center is a renowned tertiary care center in the Middle East, yet over half of the patients seeking care hail from abroad and from outside of Jordan. Only five years after the establishment of the Jordan Cardiovascular Center it became one of the most comprehensive in the Middle East by providing a wide range of varied and complex procedures.
The center applies the highest international standards in the diagnosis and management of cardiovascular diseases and abides by the most stringent guidelines for treatments; performing about 2000 diagnostic catheterizations and interventional procedures annually.
International Standards
Some of the specialized procedures the center performs include trans-catheter valve implantation (TVI) which is the implantation of the aortic valve using catheterization techniques rather than surgery. The procedure is usually accomplished without the need for a cardiopulmonary bypass and has the potential to shorten recovery times. This benefits patients with aortic stenosis which primarily afflicts the elderly.
These patients who are of advanced age and may have possible co-morbidities are at greater risk during open heart surgery; this procedure greatly reduces that risk. Although the FDA has yet to approve the procedure, the promising results outside the USA have led to a gradual shift towards this less-invasive intervention in moderate – risk patients.
This latest introduction in cardiac care saves many lives and decreases morbidity of patients requiring aortic valve replacement. The Jordan Hospital Cardiovascular Center is proudly among the select centers in the world providing this technology.
Minimally Invasive Procedures
The center offers other minimally invasive procedures such as percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) which includes balloon angioplasty, stenting, rotational atherectomy and other traditional techniques to treat coronary artery disease. The center specializes in complex and high risk PCI, with a large percentage of the procedures involving patients with multi-vessel disease, left main stenosis, severe left ventricular dysfunction and chronic total occlusion. Results are optimized by using intravascular ultrasound routinely as a diagnostic tool.
Alcohol septal ablation is a catheterization procedure that is performed by injecting a small amount of alcohol into the septum using a small coronary catheter. This procedure is used to treat patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a disease in which muscle thickening occurs without obvious cause.
The most common site of abnormal muscle thickening is the septum. This thickening can result in obstruction of blood flow from the heart to the body resulting in chest pains, difficult breathing, fainting, rapid heartbeat and occasionally death.
While surgical “myectomy” (removing the thickened portion from the ventricular wall) is successful in the relief of symptoms, alcohol septal ablation is a non-surgical alternative that is less invasive and treat outflow obstruction in HCM patients. The injected alcohol causes a controlled myocardial infarction (a small controlled heart attack) resulting in the resolution of the thickened muscle of the septum, thereby widening the outflow tract and relieving the obstruction.
The closure of congenital heart defects such as atrial septal defect (ASD), patent foramen ovale (PFO), ventricular septal defects (VSD) and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) and others are routinely fixed in the catheterization laboratory. Special devices are used to close these defects with the need for surgery.
Angioplasty and stenting techniques are routinely used as peripheral vascular interventions, to treat different peripheral vascular beds such as renal, visceral, upper and lower extremity arteries and veins. Embolization techniques are performed regularly to treat anomalous vascular structures and sources of bleeding in different organs. Angioplasty coupled with stenting is a safe alternative and better option to treat certain patient with carotid artery disease.
Potential candidates for carotid artery stenting include patients who have had recurrent narrowing after surgical carotid endarterectomy, previous neck radiation therapy, previous radical neck dissection, blockages that cannot be reached by surgical techniques and high surgical risk patients. Opening a blockage in the carotid artery can decrease the risk of stroke. The center uses embolic protection in all patients undergoing carotid stenting to decrease the procedural risk of stroke.
The treatment of aneurismal disease, particularly thoracic and abdominal aortic aneurysm, has changed dramatically in the past decade. Specialized devices have made it possible to reduce incision size and post operation recovery.
These devices are inserted through a small groin incision and are placed to separate the aneurysm from the blood flow of the vessels, thereby reducing the risk of rupture and other complications from the disease. The Jordan Hospital Cardiovascular Center is at the forefront of all of these minimally-invasive, life enhancing and life saving procedures.
Imad A. Alhaddad, MD, FACC, FACP of the The Jordan Cardiovascular Center can be reached at Jordan Hospital,Queen Nour Street, Amman-Jordan, Tel: +96265626197, Fax: +96265626198 or by E-mail: Alhaddad@pol.net.
After completing medical school with honors at Jordan University, Dr. Alhaddad moved to the USA where he completed a residency in Internal Medicine followed by a fellowship in Cardiovascular Diseases at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York. He finished fellowship training in Vascular Medicine and Interventions at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts.
At Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore-Maryland, he concluded a fellowship in Interventional Cardiology as well as a degree in the Business of Medicine. He is currently board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine, Cardiovascular Diseases, Interventional Cardiology and Nuclear Cardiology. He maintains fellow rank at the American College of Physician and the American College of Cardiology.
