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Hello, I'm Stuart Christenson. I'm a physician here, a cardiologist at McFarland Clinic and
board certified in internal medicine and cardiology, and a number of imaging specialties. Cardiology
is a practice of medicine focused mainly on the heart and encompasses a broad array of
things related to the heart. It has some plumbing. The heart has arteries that run on the outside,
and we take care of that. It has some electricity involved. There's wiring in the heart that
can cause different heart rhythm problems. There's valves in the heart. There's heart
muscle problems called cardiomyopathy, so a number of different issues related to the
heart. We try to prevent heart disease, prevent heart muscle and artery, or valve or rhythm
problems, and then we treat people after they've had trouble and try to prevent future problems.
When a patient comes to visit us in cardiology, we check them in and bring them back to an
exam room. We have a new facility that we're very proud about and plenty of space for our
patients. Often, our initial visit gets an electrocardiogram, which is heart tracing
of the heart rhythm, and then a brief visit with one of our nurses, and then we'll get
to sit and visit for awhile. That's one of the things I really like about cardiology.
I built in plenty of time to see patients in my schedule. I try not to rush the appointments
too much, and we get a chance to really talk about the problems that are going on, particularly
if those problems are related to the heart. Then after we've visited for a little bit,
we'll do an examination and take a listen to the heart and lungs, and all the blood
vessels, try and check things out. Then, we'll often have some diagrams and brochures and
models we'll look at in relation to the heart and how it relates to whatever problem you're
coming in with. We try and come up with a plan moving forward. The most rewarding part
of being a cardiologist, there are so many rewarding parts. It's hard to name just one,
but I just love taking care of patients. I get to spend time with patients, and we get
a wide variety of people here. In Ames, we have a number of young patients, Iowa State
students, that we can take care of with different problems, and easily, heart disease can develop
later in life as well. We can take care of people as they're aging. The nice thing is
we can see people get better. They come into the hospital or come into our clinic with
a problem. We can try and make them feel better, and that's a wonderful thing to help patients
out.