Milwaukee-based Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center opened on Wednesday a new clinic for Advanced Heart Failure Therapies.
Called the Tendick Clinic for Advanced Heart Failure Therapies at Aurora St. Luke’s, the newly redesigned and dedicated clinic space on the fourth floor galleria will staff 40 to 50 people, including nurses, doctors and physician’s assistants.
According to Aurora spokesman Matt Braun, the project was a rebuild of an old space and was done in order to have all the advanced heart failure care in one area, including a lab and newer 3-D imaging.
Braun said the clinic will serve about 7,000 patients a year from across the region.
Aurora St. Luke’s is known for conducting Wisconsin’s first heart transplant in 1968. Over the years, it has performed more than 800 heart transplants and installed more than 700 artificial heart pumps.
It is estimated that 5.1 million Americans suffer from heart failure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Up until the mid-1990s heart transplants were the only option for sick patients; but, with the development of new technologies, machines can now serve as bridges to transplants, and sometimes last for decades.
At Aurora St. Luke’s, doctors are pioneering the increased use of ventricular assistance devices (VADs) as an integral part of treatment. VADs can partially or completely replace a heart, and be used both short- and long-term.
The investment in the redesigned clinic was undisclosed.
