Professionals in the cardiology program at FirstHealth Moore Regional Hospital are at war with the number one killer in the United States.

“We in cardiology are engaged in a war with heart disease,” says David M. Cowherd, M.D., an invasive cardiologist with Pinehurst Medical Clinic and medical director of Moore Regional’s Cardiac Catheterization Lab.

“Heart disease kills more people in this country than any other disease,” he says. “This area of North Carolina, particularly this region, seems to be inundated with coronary disease — from Pinehurst to Lumberton to Raeford to Lee County out to Montgomery County.”

To help fight the battle, Moore Regional’s heart team recently began using advanced cutting balloon catheters to remove the arterial blockages that can cause heart attacks.

Much like traditional balloon catheters, cutting balloons inflate within the coronary artery. But they are equipped with microscopic razor blade tips to carve blockage away from arterial walls.

“When you expand traditional balloon catheters, they basically push the blockage out of the way in an uncontrolled fashion,” Cowherd says. “The cutting balloon etches the arteriosclerosis (blockage), providing a cutting plane to give a more controlled and limited type of damage to the artery as we stretch it open.”

The cutting balloon provides Moore Regional’s heart team with more predictable, immediate results, Cowherd says. Studies show that the procedure also reduces the occurrence of restenosis, scar tissue in the injured arterial wall that can re-block the artery.

“When we open an artery, it causes trauma,” Cowherd says. “And like any traumatized tissue, it reacts by forming scar tissue, which is the basis for restenosis. Hopefully, the cutting balloon will result in less trauma, which will create less scarring and therefore less restenosis. The restenosis rate for traditional balloons is about one in three. We hope to get that rate down to zero in the future, possibly within the next three to five years.”

The cardiac program has also opted to use beta radiation to reduce, if not eliminate, the occurrence of restenosis in stents, the stainless steel mesh tubes placed inside a coronary artery to keep it open. Beta radiation will be used only in specific catheterization procedures where a stent has become scarred.

“In this situation,” Cowherd says, “we know if we use a balloon inside the stent, we’ve got a 50 percent chance of the restenosis coming back. In addition to ballooning inside the stent, we’ll place radioactive pellets in the stent to temporarily irradiate the area. This limits scar formation.”

Moore Regional is also equipped to stop a patient’s heart attack directly at its source, Cowherd says.

“We’ve transcended from common methods, such as using blood-clot buster drugs to cease heart attacks,” he says. “If someone has a heart attack, we probably won’t use busters. We’ll probably take them straight to the lab to look at their arteries so we can open up the one that’s closed.

“This is how we get somebody out of the hospital in three days who’s had a heart attack. The first thing we do is stop the heart attack. So, from the hour of admission on, all we’re dealing with is recovery from the attack, not the attack occurring. It’s made a big difference to our patients.”

Meeting patients’ growing needs means keeping up with the latest technology and training, as well as expanding the number of cardiac catheterization labs, Cowherd says. The program that was established 14 years ago in a small room that also housed radiology has grown to four labs and will soon become five.

“From 1987 until now, a lot of new technology and equipment, in the way of invasive cardiology, has become available,” he says. “Take the heart catheterization process in general. It’s a procedure that’s been around for more than 30 years, and it’s still head and shoulders above any other diagnostic test when it comes to telling the presence or absence of coronary disease, as well as the extent of coronary disease and how to best treat it.”

Besides using state-of-the-art technology and advanced procedures, FirstHealth’s Heart Care program now boasts three cardiac surgeons, who successfully complete hundreds of open-heart surgeries each year.

“Our three surgeons do about 400 heart surgical procedures a year,” Cowherd says. “Their operative record is excellent. They have less than a 1 percent mortality rate. In fact, the entire cardiovascular program received a ‘100 Top Hospitals: Cardiovascular Benchmarks for Success’ award in June 2000, which shows our commitment to providing quality care.”

More information about FirstHealth of the Carolinas is available at the Web site www.firsthealth.org.

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