Butler Memorial Hospital makes advances in heart science
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, pulmonary embolisms are seen more frequently, according to the director of the Independence Health System’s Butler Memorial Hospital, where the catheterization laboratory — also known as the cath lab — was recently renovated with new equipment to treat such heart conditions.
The cath lab at Butler Memorial Hospital has undergone a transformation over the past few months, gaining medical technology that will allow it to keep pace with larger hospital systems in the greater Pittsburgh area, Jennifer Thomas said.
It’s already saving lives, she said.
“One of the things that we're finding, post-COVID, is that pulmonary embolisms are more frequently seen,” Thomas said. “What a mechanical thrombectomy does is, it's like a catheter that goes up to the area into the lungs, and it's able to basically suck out the (blood) clot.”
One case that sticks out to Thomas — who joined Butler Memorial Hospital in November — is the case of one elderly man who came to the hospital “significantly short of breath” and not feeling too well.
“He came into the lab on a significant amount of oxygen, and he left the lab on room air and feeling phenomenal,” Thomas said. “And then he only had to stay one night here.”
Thomas said one of the key components of any heart hospital is the cath lab, a room with diagnostic imaging equipment used to diagnose heart ailments.
“For 2025, we brought in a lot of new technology that typically goes to the larger hospital systems,” Thomas said. “We're trying to bring those out to our community.”
One of the new technologies recently introduced to the hospital is Pulsed Field Ablation, a new technology approved by the FDA in December 2023, which delivers electrical pulses to heart tissue to treat certain conditions.
Over the past few months, the cath lab has performed its first procedures with this process.
“It helps individuals with atrial fibrillation, and it helps terminate that so that they could potentially not be symptomatic and have to go back to the hospital,” Thomas said.
Other procedures recently implemented at the cath lab for the first time include the Impella device — an artificial heart pump for those who have suffered heart failure — and the Inari procedure, which uses a catheter to mechanically treat the more common pulmonary embolisms, she said.
Thomas says that the advances at the cath lab make it easier for patients to get their needed care within Butler County without having to drive all the way out to Pittsburgh or even further afield.
“Coming from city hospitals, I used to hear how people don't understand how much it costs to drive, and then park, and then get lost, and how it’s a different environment than they’re used to,” Thomas said. “The more we can bring to the community, the better it is for them.”
