Doctor Brings His Heart to Yuba City
by Eve Hightower, Appeal-Democrat
published March 20, 2006
When Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans, the start of Iman Kahwaji's career as a full-fledged doctor was devastated.
He had excepted a position at Tulane University Medical Center, located in New Orleans. Last fall, the pediatric cardiac interventionalist should have been diagnosing heart defects in newborns and caring for adults who had long dealt with heart murmurs.
It never happened.
Instead, the hospital laid off employees and lost doctors to more secure jobs elsewhere.
Kahwaji, who was in Israel when Katrina hit, slowly began to realize that Tulane officials did not know when doctors could return to their rounds at the university medical center.
“When I first got through, the operator said they'd be closed for two years,” he said.
So Kahwaji looked elsewhere.
“I was very interested in a position that would allow me to not only do interventional procedures, but also allow me to practice the entire spectrum of pediatric cardiology,” Kahwaji said.
Sutter North Medical Group will let him do just that, which is why he is starting his career as a physician in Yuba City, he added.
Kahwaji is not green. He has 16 years of study and training, including at the Children's Hospital of Boston and the Children's Medical Center of Dallas. The doctor has performed more than 300 interventional procedures for children and adults born with heart defects.
Kahwaji, who started at Sutter North this month, is the only pediatric cardiac interventionalist north of Sacramento. There are two others in all of the Sacramento Valley.
Kahwaji had other offers, but opted for Sutter North because it felt right, he said.
“They were hiring because they didn't want their patients to have a three-week wait. I can respect that,” the cardiac specialist said.
“And their facilities exceed many academic institutions,” he added while examining a 6-week-old boy with two holes in his heart and an open vessel that should have closed within three days of birth.
Alicia Ramirez, 27, said her son's condition is distressing but Kahwaji puts her at ease.
“He's on top of it,” she said.
Images of Brett Davis' tiny heart palpitated on a Live 3D Echo screen. The 3D Echo works like an ultrasound machine used to examine fetuses, but it provides clearer and more complete pictures of hearts. Nurses can rotate images to see parts of the heart that surgeons would normally need a scalpel to reach.
The 3D Echo is exemplary of Sutter North's commitment to providing patients with the best care it can, Kahwaji said.
“It says something about their vision. This is something you don't even see in major institutions,” he added.
The high-tech machine helps Kahwaji confront patients' heart defects, which are more extensive than he expected to find at a hospital in rural California.
“I'm seeing real problems, beyond murmurs and chest pains,” he said.
He has already transferred three patients to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, including a 17-year-old who was on the operating table within five hours after Kahwaji's referral.
“I've spent most of my career in academic centers. This is very rewarding,” Kahwaji said after examining the young Brett.
Kahwaji is less concerned about the holes in Brett's heart than an open vessel. Sometimes when the vessel closes, it spurs a narrowing of an arch in the heart. That narrowing could have dire consequences.
“It's important to know that when the vessel closes completely, there's no further narrowing. I mean we're talking here about millimeters,” he said. “You just cannot take chances. You have to be aggressive - or you could see a poor outcome. And no one wants to see a poor outcome.”
Appeal-Democrat reporter Eve Hightower can be reached at 749-4724. You may e-mail her at ehightower@appeal-democrat.com.