Comprehensive cardiac care coming to St. Charles hospital

Starting in March, residents who suffer a heart attack in St. Charles Parish will be able to receive much-needed treatment in Luling instead of being transferred out of the area.

Currently, St. Charles Parish Hospital is unable to offer comprehensive cardiovascular treatment and patients who need such care are typically sent to Kenner. But due to a partnership between the hospital and Cardiovascular Institute of the South, residents will be able to visit a new clinic that offers services to diagnose and treat cardiovascular disease.

The clinic, which will be located inside St. Charles Parish Hospital, will operate five days a week and offer EKGs, ultrasounds, nuclear stress testing and exercise treadmill tests. A cardiac ultrasound is a medical imaging procedure that generates a picture of the heart for the purpose of evaluating a heart condition or suspected heart problem. Cardiac nuclear medicine is useful in diagnosing and assessing coronary artery disease, while treadmill services allow doctors to measure the heart’s response to the stress of physical activity.

Dr. Christopher Paris will provide care for patients at the CIS Luling clinic. A native of Houma, Paris received his doctorate from the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center in New Orleans and completed his internal medicine residency at Vanderbilt University. Both his cardiology and interventional cardiology fellowships were completed at Ochsner Clinic Foundation in New Orleans. Paris also recently completed his board certification in nuclear cardiology.

Quinn Landry, a spokesman for St. Charles Parish Hospital, said that community focus groups identified cardiac care as something parish residents would like to see the hospital offer.

"We don’t have a lot of these services and when we talked to the community this was something they really asked for," Landry said. "This is a huge step forward for us. We felt that CIS was a perfect fit."

With a team of nearly 500 dedicated team members, CIS serves communities throughout Louisiana, as well as national and international patients, at its 14 clinics. CIS says that they provide the most up-to-date technology coupled with compassionate care.

The clinic is scheduled to open on March 4. To schedule an appointment at the Luling location, call (985)308-1604.