February is American Heart Month and is a perfect reminder to take a closer look at your heart health. One way to do that is through an in-depth cardiovascular screening. Avera registered nurse Katie Nachreiner explains how Planet Heart helps patients understand their risk of developing heart disease.
What is Planet Heart and what is it trying to do?
So Planet Heart is a screening program through the Avera Heart Hospital. What it does is it scans for signs of cardiovascular disease to help reduce the risk of a person having a heart attack or a stroke.
What is the screening process like?
There are two parts to this screening. There's the cardiac portion and then the vascular portion. So with the cardiac portion, we're doing a CT scan of your heart to look for a calcium score. We're checking your blood pressure, we're checking your blood sugar, we're looking at your cholesterol, and then we're also looking at lifestyle choices such as do you smoke? What's your exercise routine? What's your family history, those kind of things. The second part of the screening is the vascular portion. So they're doing an ultrasound of your abdominal aortic, looking for aneurysms. They're looking at your carotid arteries, doing ultrasound of those, and then they're scanning your legs for peripheral vascular disease.
What is this information giving patients and doctors?
It’s giving you an overview of your cardiac health. What is your risk assessment of developing a cardiac issue in the next 10 years? And that is a screening tool that we use as well as part of the program. What's really cool and unique about this program is you get immediate results, and those results are discussed one-on-one with a nurse at the end of your appointment. So if you have questions, we can answer all those. It's more of a conversation about what these numbers mean. And if there is something alarming, we can help set up a referral over at North Central Heart as well.
Planet Heart in Sioux Falls recently moved, how has this benefited patients that come here?
Yes, we moved down the road from the Avera Heart Hospital on West 69th Street and it’s helped improve accessibility since it opened in the summer of 2024. We've been able to increase our numbers. We're seeing about 100 patients a week, which is exciting. It's also given us our own space where you're not moving all over the hospital. It's more efficient as far as the flow of Planet Heart.
Why should someone consider scheduling a Planet Heart screening?
Planet Heart is recommended for men over the age of 40 and women over the age of 45. In addition. There's not always signs and symptoms of heart disease. So this is a great baseline of where to start. The cost of Planet Heart is not run through insurance; however, some Avera Health Plans insurance products cover Planet Heart as a free wellness benefit. People also can often use their flex dollars to cover this screening. Yet the $125 cost for heart, vascular and thoracic screenings is something most anyone can afford. In addition to the Sioux Falls location, Avera screens between 4,000 and 5,000 people a year across 26 Planet Heart locations in South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska.
