Driving Our Economy Forward: Vascular Institute of Chattanooga
The Vascular Institute of Chattanooga specializes in the comprehensive treatment of vascular disease.
Patients are seen quickly and without a referral.
Tonight we look at how the Chattanooga business has been driving our economy forward with successful outcomes.
“We’re actually treating it right now so we’re using heat energy to actually cauterize that vein.”
“So the baser Institute of Chattanooga was born about 8 years ago. And it was out of uh some personal frustration with the medical communities,” said Chris LeSar, MD, FACS, RVT, Vascular Institute of Chattanooga.
“Does that feel better? Did I get it? Fine. Okay.”
“The medical systems don’t necessarily make it easy for patients to get through the process. And in my world my job is to take care of patients with vascular disorders; so problems with their arteries or their veins. And those can be sometimes acute problem,” said LeSar.
“If you don’t deal with these problems and they they start dealing with you.”
“We can’t wait you know 3 months to see me as a specialist, and that’s part of the system that was not functioning properly,” said LeSar.
“And that’s probably why you’re having such pain in your leg. And you have some swelling in that leg.”
“We designed it from ground up on how to take care of patients, in an efficient manner; get them through the system. Um get them the best care that we can possibly give them. And in particular um we were designed to be an amputation prevention center. So someone that has a wound on their foot, um um or Gang Green of their toe, sometimes people could wait for weeks before they could see a doctor to actually solve their problem. And by that time it might be too late to save their leg,” said LeSar.
“We expanded that uh that goal and that mission tremendously. We fight amputation every day but we also improve quality of life for patients every day. Restoring the flow, helping to alleviate painful you know varicose veins, painful swelling, things like that. Um, and we also combat stroke. We combat combat aneurysm disease. It’s, it’s a, it’s a broad spectrum of of uh pathologies that we treat and it’s it’s fantastic,” said William B. Harris, DO, FACS, RPVI, Vascular Institute of Chattanooga.
“What we want to do is make this vein go away. This vein’s a problem, little pinch, little pinch this vein’s a problem. And we’re going to make that ve go away.”
“And so by changing the availability of the… of for, patients getting into the system quicker, um, we can see patients now within 3 days on average. And um get them through the process much faster so we can do things to actually save their leg and prevent amputations,” said LeSar.
“You’re fine, you can relax it, I got it. Okay yeah, relax. It’s okay.”
“Time is tissue. If you’re having a heart attack, we got to get them into an operating area to fix the heart… right away, or you lose tissue. if you have a stroke happening you got to get to a stroke center so they can put in the medication to remove the clot or go in there and get it out to save the brain. Same thing for the foot or the leg. If you have poor blood flow, flow feeling a pain in your leg, loss of sensation in your leg, open swords or wounds that don’t heal or W weakness with walking FL. If you have a flow problem you need to get in in right away. it’s CU time is tissue and if you don’t get in right away then people start to have more problems and potentially could lose a leg,” said LeSar.
