09/05/11 Letters to the Editor

Memorial’s effort

To the editor — Recent letters indicate a misunderstanding of why Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital has petitioned the state to expand its cardiac services.

Both hospitals are staffed by Yakima Heart Center cardiologists. Both hospitals are capable of providing state-of-the-art services for all forms of adult cardiac disease, including catheter intervention with angioplasty and stent placement for acute heart attack. Outcomes are virtually identical for the two hospitals. Yakima Regional Cardiac and Medical Center has a beautiful new open heart surgery suite. They will continue to treat all patients requiring open heart surgery.

The issue is about performance of "elective" catheter intervention with angioplasty and/or stent placement. In the early days of angioplasty, complications occasionally led to emergency open heart surgery, which restricted angioplasty to hospitals with open heart surgery programs. More advanced techniques of catheter intervention means emergency open heart standby is no longer essential.  

Transferring patients from Memorial to Regional for elective catheter intervention is inconvenient and expensive. Since all equipment and personnel needed for this procedure are the same as that required for treatment of patients with acute heart attack, it is counterintuitive and counterproductive to force transfer to Regional for catheter treatment of these more stable patients.

RICHARD D. TWISS, M.D.

retired cardiologist

Yakima

Cheers for vehicle

To the editor — Re: The Aug. 23 article, "Yakima County Search and Rescue gets mobile command post." Hoo doggies! Yakima Sheriff’s office, Amateur Radio Emergency Services, and Search and Rescue (YSO/ARES/SAR) just got themselves a new RV! This has been a long time coming and through the generosity of Legends Casino and other organizations (Valley of the Sun Triathlon Association was not mentioned — our feelings are hurt), YSO/ARES/SAR now has a state-of-the-art vehicle that serves multiple purposes.

I don’t believe that many Yakima residents know that ARES/SAR participates in many events in the Yakima Valley from athletic events to fundraisers. This highly trained and exceptionally capable group is the safety net that is thrown over each event. They know what’s happening at various critical locations during each event and their mission is the safety of all participants.

These groups deserve a multipurpose vehicle that will allow them to do their job at even a higher level than they usually achieve. I applaud all who donated toward the purchase of the new vehicle. I will miss the old "Slammer," however, I understand that she’ll be brought out occasionally as needed.

CANDIE TURNER

Yakima