Dr. Peter Gott offers sound medical answers to reader questions in the new Lifestyles section...
Vascular surgery available in Malone
MALONE — Michael A. Ricci, MD, a vascular surgeon at Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington who has been seeing patients since 1996 at Alice Hyde Medical Center, now does surgeries and procedures at the Malone hospital.
Vascular surgery is a specialty area dedicated to the treatment of diseases affecting the circulatory system (arteries and veins).
Dialysis patients who previously had to travel an hour for procedures to put in shunts and fistulas can now have that done by Ricci. He also treats chronic venous insufficiency and varicose veins. Some of these procedures can be performed now in Malone, a press release said, but Ricci will soon employ a machine that provides a minimally invasive treatment with radiofrequency to heat and close a patient's abnormally enlarged veins in the legs.
AMC offers BSGI
SARANAC LAKE — Adirondack Medical Center Breast now offers Specific Gamma Imaging (BSGI), a new technology for detecting breast cancer in women with dense breast tissue and who have already had a mammogram or breast ultrasound.
"This is cutting edge technology, and AMC is the first facility north of New York City to offer this modality," said AMC Chief Operating Officer Cyndee McGuire.
This is in addition to the recently installed, state-of-the-art digital mammography unit located at the Countess Alicia Spaulding-Paolozzi Breast Center at AMC in Saranac Lake.
The BSGI is intended to be used as a follow-up exam, and a mammogram is still the most important tool doctors have to screen for and diagnose breast cancer and track women who have been diagnosed, a press release said.
For more information, call 897-2293.
AMC P-R team recognized
SARANAC LAKE — The community-relations team at Adirondack Medical Center has been chosen winner of the 2009 Public Relations Excellence Award by the Healthcare Association of New York State.
The award acknowledges the breadth of creativity and excellence for advocacy efforts of New York's health-care providers. AMC was chosen from the northeastern New York region, which includes nearly 100 hospitals and long-term-care facilities.
The AMC team is: Cheryl Breen Randall, executive director of the AMC Foundation & Community Relations; and Joe Riccio, communications manager.
Breen Randall has been with AMC and before that Lake Placid General Hospital for almost 30 years. She has served in a variety of capacities, and currently oversees the Foundation and Community Relations. Ricco has been with AMC since 2006, and prior to that he was the editor of The Malone Telegram.
For more information about AMC, log onto www.amcCares.org.
