44 LONGISLANDPRESS.COM • DECEMBER 2020
DR. LAWRENCE KANNER HEART GOES ON
Dr. Lawrence Kanner, the chief of
cardiology at Mount Sinai South
Nassau in Oceanside, is leading the
hospital’s cardiac unit into a new era
as it embarks on a journey to perform
open-heart surgery for the first time.
In a partnership with Mount Sinai
Heart, which was ranked No. 6 nationally
for cardiology and heart surgery
by U.S. News & World Report, work is
slated to begin in the spring on a new
four-story addition that will include
nine new operating suites specifically
designed for open-heart surgery,
pending health department approval.
This conversation has been edited for
length and clarity.
What inspired you to focus your
medical practice on the heart? The
thing about cardiology is — especially
procedural cardiology — is that
not only can you get the immediate
gratification of fixing something but
you also frequently have long-term
relationships. I don’t know why
anyone would do anything else. I get
the best of both worlds. I get to fix
things and make people feel better
right away.
Can you tell me about the advancements
in preventing, detecting, and
treating heart disease that you’ve
seen? In the last 15 to 20 years, statins,
the anticholesterol drugs, have had a
huge effect on how we manage coronary
disease. They have been demonstrated
to show plaque regression so
you can actually have blockages and
then go on high doses of statin therapy,
like Lipitor or Crestor, so that you
can actually reverse coronary disease
with medicines. In terms of intervention,
much of the research has gone
toward stents. They came out with
drugs that were coated with a drug
that inhibited the progression of scar
tissue. The number of open-heart surgeries
for bypass that are being done
really tanked after that because many
patients can be managed in the cath
lab. In my area, defibrillators have
made a huge difference. Twenty-five
years ago patients died when they
were outside of a heart attack. Many
of those patients went on to have a
sudden death afterwards. Now we
have very well-established guidelines
on how to approach a patient who has
a weak heart muscle after a heart attack,
and many of these patients get
seen years after their defibrillator is
put in.
What issues have you faced in ushering
some of these advancements
into practice? Sometimes there’s
intolerance toward medications or
patients’ ability to afford medications
sometimes comes into play. In terms
of device implantation for defibrillators,
there are patients who are not
good candidates based on the fact
they have not been optimized on their
medication. And there are still many
people in the community who aren’t
seeing doctors regularly.
What can the public do to mitigate
their risk? The only thing that a person
can’t do is change their genes. If
you have early disease in your family,
that’s one thing that can’t be changed.
Smoking is No. 1. There’s nothing good
that smoking does. Good control of diabetes
is another one. Very aggressive
control of sugar. Weight reduction,
when appropriate. And making sure
when you hit those adult years, 40
years-plus, that you’re seeing your
primary care physician regularly.
How has the coronavirus pandemic
impacted your work? We have a
general feeling for how many heart
attacks we see on a monthly basis
and it kind of dropped off somewhat
during Covid. And it’s not because
Covid was protecting against getting
a heart attack. Those people did not
seek care.
Is there anything on the horizon that
has you excited about how we treat
patients next? The main thrust in our
area now has been the management
of atrial fibrillation. AFib is the most
common heart rhythm disorder in the
country and has certain morbidities
associated with it. And one of the
main growth areas has been ablation
of AFib where we electrically isolate
the areas of the heart that are causing
atrial fibrillation.
Anything else you want to add?
We’re going to be developing an openheart
program here at Mount Sinai
South Nassau. In 2006 we were the
first hospitals to do an angioplasty
in a hospital that didn’t have cardiac
surgery on-site. We were the first hospital
in New York State to do that. The
program then grew and we developed
a very successful cardiology program.
We don’t do open-heart surgery here
yet. That is one of the technologies
we’re going to be growing over the
next several years under Mount Sinai
Heart.
PRESS HEALTH
Dr. Lawrence Kanner examines a patient and in an interventional cardiology
procedure room.
“We’re going to be developing an open-heart
program here at Mount Sinai South Nassau,”
Dr. Lawrence Kanner says.
/LONGISLANDPRESS.COM
