Cardiac doctor sets up shop in Gallup

By Zsombor Peter
Staff Writer

GALLUP — With roughly twice the room it's had in the past, Gallup's new heart clinic promises speedier service for local patients.

After two years on Nizhoni Boulevard across from the Gallup Indian Medical Center, the New Mexico Heart Institute's local clinic started the year in a new and larger facility by the intersection of Aztec Avenue and Boardman Drive. It's hosting an open house this afternoon from 3 to 7.

All that extra space, said Brett Schuler, the Institute's marketing director, will be used to house brand new equipment, chief among them a nuclear camera. What the impressively named camera essentially does, said Schuler, is pick up the signal from a modestly radioactive dye patients are injected with to detect anything that may be blocking the flow of blood around the heart.

The new clinic will also be equipped with echocardiography machines, which send high-frequency sound waves inaudible to the human ear through the body and pick up the reflections, or echo, to come up with an image of the heart. The clinic will also be tied into the Heart Institute's new statewide digital network that will allow its doctors to study the echo results locally instead of having to relaying them through Albuquerque.

What patients will get out of the new clinic and new machines, said Schuler, is faster care. Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital, which the clinic is affiliated with, may have some of the same equipment, but having them at the clinic, he said, will save patients the trouble and time of scheduling appointments elsewhere for the care they need.

With all the new room, equipment and responsibilities, however, the clinic will be sticking with the same number of staff for now. But Schuler said the search is on for a partner for Dr. Anandan Swaminathan, who heads the clinic and, according to the Institute, is Gallup's only full-time cardiologist.

Swaminathan has practiced in Gallup since setting up a private practice here six years ago. Two years ago, he merged his practice with the Heart Institute.

The New Mexico Heart Institute came to be with the merger of three leading cardiac practices in 1994 and has since grown to include 10 full service clinics, seven travel clinics and 49 cardiovascular specialists around the state.