Facilities

Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center

Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center (LAMC) is a full-service center that provides primary through tertiary care. The Southern California regional cardiac cath lab and regional electrophysiology lab are both located at this center.

The cath lab consistently has one of the highest procedural volumes in the state of California, performing more than 5,500 diagnostic catheterizations and 2,200+ coronary interventions in 2003. All approved interventional and diagnostic devices are utilized, including balloon valvuloplasty, alcohol septal ablation for HOCM, and PFO/ASD closure devices.

In recent years, the EP lab has performed as many as 250-300 ablations and over 500 diagnostic invasive studies, in addition to tilt table testing, NIPS, ICD and BiV/CRT implantation.

The regional cardiothoracic surgery department is located at LAMC. It is one of the largest cardiac surgery programs in the state, performing about 2,500 cardiac surgical procedures each year.

LAMC houses a 33-bed CCU that admits about 250 patients each month. Because of the large volume, two separate CCU teams serve the unit. Each team consists of a staff attending, a fellow, several resident housestaff and medical students. Patients may be admitted from the ER, clinic, cath lab, EP lab, or transferred from other facilities. Therefore, the fellow is exposed to the widest possible range of pathology and acuity.

State of the art equipment are utilized in all areas (cath lab, echo lab, nuclear medicine, etc.), affording the fellow an up-to-date training experience.

Ancillary support is abundant. For example, RNs perform the majority of treadmill tests, freeing the fellow to engage in educational activities.