Louisiana Cardiovascular Center for Excellence opens in Eunice

The Louisiana Cardiovascular Center for Excellence has opened an office in Eunice to specialize in limb, wound and foot care.
Michael Sonnier, APRN, FNP-c, a vascular specialist at the center, said, “There was a big interest with opening a multi-specialty clinic somewhere in this area.
“One thing that we have noticed with vascular medicine is that vascular medicine doesn’t usually occur on its own. It is usually accompanied by a lot of other problems.”
Sonnier spoke to the Eunice Rotary Club on Wednesday.
The new clinic is located at 151 Hill St., Suite 1, in Eunice, and the phone number is 337-466-3030.
Staff at the facility also includes David Allie, M.D., founder and medical director and chief of vascular and endovascular surgery; Kara Beth Marcantel, peripheral interventional radiologist; and Byron Fournet, APRN, FNP-c, board certified adult nurse practitioner, director of nursing and vascular specialist. The Lafeyette office is located at 4212 West Congress St. in Lafayette, and the number to that office is 337-456-6523.
Sonnier said that often times the best way to tell whether or not someone is having a vascular problem is by looking at their feet.
“In the case of diabetes, diabetics often need foot care,” he said. “Most people with cardiovascular disease also end up with some sort of renal or kidney problems.”
He continued, “It’s very rare to go into a town with a population of about 12,000 people where you can find this kind of specialty care. That’s why I was so excited about bringing it here.”
The center provides treatments for health problems such as peripheral vascular disease, chronic venous insufficiency, abdominal aortic aneurysms, carotid artery disease, deep vein thrombosis, critical limb ischemia and May-Thurner syndrome.
Sonnier spoke at last Wednesday’s Rotary meeting. Sonnier said treatment for critical limb ischemia is the most essential care provided at the facility.
“Probably the most important thing that we do is restore vasculature in people that have critical limb ischemia,” Sonnier said. “The legs are dying because they aren’t getting enough blood flow.”
Sonnier told the audience about a patient that was referred to the center by an orthopedic, and the orthopedic wanted the staff at the center to see where an amputation could be done on the patient.
“In the process of working the patient up, Dr. Allie ordered a computed tomography anagram, which lights up the blood vessels and shows you blood flow,” Sonnier said. “The anagram showed calcium deposits, and it showed a good target, a good spot to tie in a vascular graph.
Sonnier said Allie obtained specially measured cadaver arteries for the surgery.
“Through the surgery, Dr. Allie was able to get blood flow from the armpit, then went through the abdominal cavity and tied into his femoral vessel, jumped it across to the other side and then tied in another graft from there to below his knee and then tied in another graft down to his ankle,” Sonnier said. “The was probably six months ago. We have seen him three times since the surgery, and he has walked into the office all three times with no crutches, no cane, no wheelchair.”
Sonnier said peripheral arterial disease is a pandemic problem, and it has reached epidemic proportions here in the U.S. with obesity and the rise of certain disease processes. Sonnier said the disease affects approximately 8 million people in the U.S.
“Left untreated it leads to ulcerations and amputations,” Sonnier said. “It’s been the life’s work of my boss to help develop new procedures. He has kind of coined the term limb salvage — limb salvage procedures that actually prevent amputations. We do that primary by revascularizing arteries.”
Sonnier said plaque formation causes narrowing of the arteries which eventually leads to decreased circulation in the legs, decreased strength in the legs and decreased balance in the legs. Treatments for peripheral arterial disease include directional drilling, rotational, transluminal extraction, laser and stents with ballon angioplasty. Sonnier said Allie has helped to develop some of the tools for treating the disease. The treatments can be outpatient or inpatient, depending on the needs of the patient.
“About one in 10 people over the age of 60 will have peripheral arterial disease,” Sonnier said. “About two in 10 over the age of 70 will have it. If you throw in smoking, high cholesterol, eating cracklins and boudin on Saturday morning, then the rate of vascular disease goes up significantly, tremendously, beyond that.”
Sonnier said abdominal aortic aneurysms are one of more serious and life threatening vascular conditions. Abdominal aortic aneurysms occur when the walls of the arteries become weak and bulge out in the part of the aorta that passes through the abdomen, and the condition can be caused by injuries, high blood pressure and arterial disease.
“Many people who have it don’t even know they have it,” Sonnier said. “We screen for risk factors at the center and perform diagnostic checks for them. We can fix it with a minimally invasive procedure using a covered stent graph.
“Abdominal aortic aneurysms used to be a virtually terminal diagnosis. If you barely blow up a balloon, you can squeeze it as much as you want and its not going to pop, but the more air you blow into it, the bigger the balloon gets, and you touch it on something sharp and it explodes — that’ss an aneurysm.”
Sonnier said that patients typically go home the following day, whereas the surgery was once major, and patients stayed a week in intensive care following the procedure.
“It was very, very dangerous and had a high mortality rate,” Sonnier said. “Now we can fix those relatively easily.”
He continued, “It’s an immediate fix with very, very limited complications. It’s revolutionized the way that we treat aneurisms. It’s saving a lot, a lot, of lives.”