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Additional cardiologist enhances services for heart patients

By BETH SLOVIC, Chronicle Staff Writer

Fewer heart patients will have to travel to Billings for medical care now that a second cardiologist has started working at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital.


 The new physician, Dr. Dane Sobek, 34, specializes in interventional procedures to open blocked coronary arteries. Those procedures include angioplasty and stenting.

Sobek joins Dr. Blair Erb, a cardiologist whose training allows him to diagnose the blockages and help people manage heart disease.

Before Sobek's arrival in August, heart patients who required any interventional treatments had to travel to Billings.

If they were in the throes of a heart attack, the two-and-a-half-hour flight could be particularly damaging to their heart muscles.

"Now we'll be able to treat patients having a heart attack here," Sobek, who attended the University of Washington School of Medicine, said Tuesday.

About 200 to 250 people are diagnosed at the hospital's cardiac catheterization laboratory every year, Jennifer Kack, manager of the lab, said.

Of those, about one-third typically require intervention, Sobek said.

Angioplasty is a procedure in which a balloon is inserted into a clogged artery in order to push plaque out of the way of flowing blood. The balloon is then removed.

A stent is used in cases in which the artery has to be held open permanently.

Anyone who needs open-heart surgery will still have to leave Bozeman, however.

Beth Slovic is at beth@dailychronicle.com

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