A New Level of Heart Care Comes to Rockingham County

Cone Health brings highly advanced cardiac imaging to Annie Penn Hospital.

Greensboro — The ability to clearly see inside the heart, to know where calcium is building, to know where and what type of plaques are there, allows doctors to delay or prevent heart attacks and better treat heart disease. And that ability is now at Annie Penn Hospital. 

Heart disease is the number one killer in Rockingham County. In fact, 9.2% of adults in North Carolina likely have heart disease. The recently installed GE Revolution Apex CT imaging system at Annie Penn Hospital can provide HeartFlow Plaque Analysis—a strong tool that may help reduce that number. 

“HeartFlow Plaque Analysis allows us to create a 3-D model of the heart with extraordinary detail,” says Dr. Wesley O’Neal, a cardiologist at Cone Health Heartcare at Reidsville. “We can quickly find arteries that have narrowed and provide more precise and more personalized care to people who already have advanced heart disease.”

The GE Revolution Apex CT imaging can give doctors an image of the entire heart in the time it takes the heart to make a single beat. For patients, it means fewer, if any, medicines to slow the heart for scanning, fewer repeat scans and less time in the hospital being scanned. And all of this comes with lower levels of radiation compared with older, less capable systems.

“Too many times people in smaller cities and rural areas have to travel elsewhere to find advanced care,” says Chad Boore, president of the North & East Markets at Cone Health. “This investment in Annie Penn Hospital ensures people can find sophisticated heart and vascular imaging close to home and with better care that comes with it.”

Cone Health encourages people 45 and older to talk with their primary care provider to learn whether advanced heart and vascular imaging at Cone Health Annie Penn Hospital and other convenient Cone Health locations is appropriate for their care.