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Dr. Volcan Ozduran was finishing up his last year of medical school when his father was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy.

The diagnosis prompted Ozduran to specialize in heart disease, but unfortunately, his dad died when he was two years into his cardiology fellowship.

“I wanted to help others like him,” said Ozduran.

About five million people in the United States have heart failure and the number is growing, according to the National Institutes of Health. Each year, another 550,000 people are diagnosed with heart failure for the first time.

Ozduran, with Heart South in Hattiesburg, sees between 150 and 200 patients every month in his clinic, with 85 percent of those patients being diagnosed with heart failure.

Heart failure, of course, is a condition in which the heart can’t pump enough blood throughout the body. Heart failure does not mean the heart has stopped or is about to stop working. It means the heart is not able to pump blood the way it should. The heart can’t fill with enough blood or pump with enough force, or both.

After completing his internal medicine and general cardiology training, Ozduran underwent a year-and-a-half fellowship in heart failure and heart transplant at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic before beginning his practice at Heart South. “My fellowship involved taking care of the sickest heart failure patients from around the world,” Ozduran noted. “The training at Cleveland Clinic prepared me for every type of heart failure and the best treatment options using the most state-of-the-art technology.”

Since going into practice, Ozduran has established a formalized heart failure clinic, which takes a comprehensive, team approach to treating patients. Patient treatment begins with health assessments to determine what form of heart failure the patient has and to what degree. Once determined, Ozduran begins working with his patients to establish nutrition training, cardiac rehabilitation schedules and appropriate medicine regimens.

Many times, Ozduran finds himself working with other physicians because a patient may be dealing with other health issues such as sleep apnea, anemia or diabetes. “More frequently than not, we’re dealing with a multi-symptom, multi-disease approach,” Ozduran pointed out.

Heart failure clinic patients have follow-up visits with Ozduran every few weeks to few months, depending on the degree of their heart failure and severity of their condition.

“The worst feeling is having a disease like this and being left alone,” said Ozduran. “We find that patients do better when they are enrolled in our heart failure program and treated with a team approach, with the patient as the key player.”

If a heart clinic patient misses an appointment, a member of the heart clinic team makes a phone call to check on the patient, and calls are made regularly to patients to check on their progress.

“Sometimes our job may seem tedious, but our patients’ conditions can change suddenly and we’re there ready to make whatever changes to their treatment as soon as it is needed,” he said. “Our goal is to keep the patients out of the hospital, and to give them a longer, better quality of life.”

Ozduran noted that through new technologies like heart failure pacemakers and improvements in medical treatment, heart failure patients are now able to live better and longer lives.

“So many people used to think that having heart failure was a death sentence,” he said. “With the right care, heart failure will not stop a person from doing the things they enjoy. With our medical knowledge and resources, we now have patients who are managing their condition and living full and complete lives for many, many years.”



October 2007

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