The Cardiology Team

Cardiac catheterization is done by "interventional cardiologists" and not by surgeons.  It can be confusing because many patients think of cardiac catheterization as surgery.  To this day, my mother will often ask me if I do a certain cardiac catheterization procedure such as angioplasty or stent placement.  These procedures are all done by the cardiologists.

At Lehigh Valley Hospital there are several different cardiology groups: Lehigh Valley Heart Specialists (LVHS), The Heart Care Group (HCG), Lehigh Valley Cardiology Associates (LVCA) and Dr. Cassel and Associates.

I don't have pictures of all of the cardiologists, since I believe there are 50 or 60 at Lehigh Valley Hospital; however, I hope to have more of their pictures soon. 
Here are some of my cardiology colleagues:

Dr. Martin Matsumura President of the Heart Care Group Clinical Cardiologist The Heart Care Group	Dr. Ron Freudenberger Chief, Division of Cardiology Medical Director, The Regional Heart Center
Dr. Robert Oriel Interventional Cardiologist The Heart Care Group	Dr. J. Patrick Kleaveland Director, Cardiac Catheterization Lab Interventional Cardiologist Lehigh Valley Heart Specialists
Dr. Bill Combs Interventional Cardiologist The Heart Care Group   (And, a great fellow baseball fan!)	Dr. Bryan Kluck Interventional Cardiologist The Heart Care Group
Dr. Andrew Sumner Clinical Cardiologist Lehigh Valley Heart Specialists	Mr. Vince Tallarico Vice-President, Lehigh Valley Health Network Regional Heart Center Director

Members of The Heart Care Group

Dr. Martin Matsumura, Dr. Norman Marcus, Dr. Joseph Neri, Dr. Bill Combs

Dr. Bryan Kluck, Dr. Robert Oriel, Dr. Michael Durkin, Dr. Shezad Malik, Dr. David Allen

Dr. William Smolinski, Dr. James Sandberg, Dr. Jason Fragen, Dr. Prasant Pandey, Dr. Melvin Schwartz

Dr. James Pantano, Dr. Sean George, Dr. Jamie Paranicus, Dr. Sarang Mangalmurti, Dr. Chuck Peters

The clinical practice of cardiology is made up of several sub-specialities, including: Clinical Cardiology, Nuclear Medicine, CT Angiography, MRI, PET, Echography, Interventional Cardiology, and Electrophysiology.

It can be quite confusing as there is a lot of overlap.  For example, most clinical cardiologists perform nuclear medicine stress testing and read echocardiograms.  Most interventional cardiologists (the folks who perform angioplasty and stents) also usually have a clinical practice of patients who they follow in the office, and so on.

Interventional electrophysiologists diagnose and treat electrical problems with the heart, most commonly treating arrhythmias, as well as insertion of implantable defibrillators and pacemakers. 

The interventional electrophysiologists include Dr. Stephen Zelenkofske, Dr. Vadim Levin, Dr. Sultan Siddique, Dr. Robert Malacoff, and Dr. Praveer Jain.

At Lehigh Valley Hospital we also have a "clinical" electrophysiologist, Dr. Norman Marcus.  Dr. Marcus performs diagnostic electrical testing, but does not perform the interventional procedures.

Dr. James Sandberg also has been trained to insert pacemakers, though he is not an electrophysiologist per se.  Is this starting to get confusing to you? (me too).

Along these same lines, my fellow cardiac surgical partners (Dr. Gary Szydlowski,  Dr. Ted Phillips, Dr. Wu, Dr. Szwerc, and Dr. Mehta) and myself are all trained to place pacemakers.  Indeed, there is a lot of overlap between all the different cardiology and cardiac surgery procedures. 

So, after the cardiac catheterization, let's say the decision has been made that the patient needs to have open heart surgery.  This is when my surgical partners and I fit in....

Click to move along and meet my surgical partners