Dr. Ravi Akula Joins X101 for Your Care with Guthrie

John Harrison: [00:00:00] Morning, everybody. Welcome back. It’s John Harrison in the Cayuga Health System sponsored studios. And joining me over the line is Dr. Ravi Akula, uh, Dr. Uh Akula. Thanks so much for joining. 

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for having me.

John Harrison: Oh, of course, of course. Uh, so can you tell our listeners, uh, a little bit about your background and, uh, what led you to cardiology?

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah. Um, my name is Ravi Akula. Um, I’m from India. And initially when I was young and I’ve seen a lot of heart problems. And then my uncle, uh, my maternal aunt, husband is a cardiologist. I’ve seen him, and I’ve seen him treating a lot of patients and taking care of a lot of, uh, family members and patients with very good outcomes.

So initially I was thinking of something related to cardiology, but when I was in medical school, I was, uh, very much impressed with Dr. Danton [00:01:00] Cooley from Texas. I’m sure he is a world renowned cardiothoracic surgeon. So he was my role model. So I was thinking of getting into cardiothoracic surgery. But after coming to this country and when I was volunteering in, uh, the surgical intensive care unit, I felt cardiology is better suited for me, so I decided to go to cardiology.

John Harrison: Yeah. Um, and so, uh, you know, this, this specific community and organization, um, you know, deciding, uh, to, to come here and, and help out, uh, you know, was there any specific thing that that kind of led you, um, over here? 

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah, I’ve been in this community for many years. Mm-hmm. Uh, but this like towards Ithaca and Cortland is uh, just a couple of months basically there’s a lot of underserved community and lot of demand, you know, a lot of people who needs and we could really help them out. That’s one of the reasons. And obviously [00:02:00] being a bigger organization and bigger foothold. We can help a lot more. A lot bigger population. 

John Harrison: Yeah. And, uh, so your cardiology department, um, what sort of services are available? Uh, so our listeners know, uh, you know, if they’re, uh, experiencing something, they, they know exactly where to turn to. 

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah, so basically we provide almost all the basic cardiology services, including, as you know, the real money is in the proven to care. By the time you have heart attack or stent or bypass surgery, it’s already late.

If you can avoid that, avoid any problems initially, like, uh, before getting into that point of heart attack, that preventive care, that’s where the real money is. And towards that, we can provide all the preventive cardiology services, taking care of all the risk factors, like adequate control of, uh, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obviously obesity and, um, the other risk factors.

But once you have [00:03:00] known problems like heart attack, stents and bypass surgeries, when we provide all like full breadth of all the cardiac services. Including the stress test, Holter monitors, even monitors. And we do also echocardiograms, stress echocardiograms and nucleus stress tests. 

John Harrison: Wow. Yeah. So, uh, very, very thorough and, and, uh, you offer a lot, uh, in your department.

Um, are there any new technologies, uh, or treatments, uh, that, that you offer or that you’re excited that are gonna be coming to, uh, to your department or that are just recently, uh, installed that you, you wanna talk about? 

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah, so apart from what we talked about the stress tests, echocardiograms, monitors, there’s a relatively new, it’s not like cutting edge technology, but for us, we are getting this coronary CT angiogram and uh, which will be activated pretty soon.

With that, basically you can look at the coronary anatomy. That means you can look at the arteries of the heart [00:04:00] without doing any invasive procedure. It’s relatively. Minimal. It’s like a CT scan, one breath hold. You get all the information, like least invasive, but we get very good information from that. It’s not suitable for all the patients, but uh, for a specific group of patients is a very useful test. 

John Harrison: Wow. Yeah. Um, and you know, for any patients who might be interested or, or somebody experiencing, um, any sort of difficulties, uh, how can they reach out to you? Um, how can they get talked? 

Dr. Ravi Akula: They can call the main number at the Cortland Hospital.

John Harrison: Mm-hmm. 

Dr. Ravi Akula: And then they’ll transfer to our friend desk in the cardiology department. And obviously if they’re close to Ithaca, we have an office in Hanshaw Road in Ithaca. They can contact us there. And obviously we’ll provide all the services at both places in Ithaca. We don’t do nuclear cardiology stress tests, but basically they’re close by and we can transfer them, uh, for if there’s any need of [00:05:00] nuclear stress tests.

John Harrison: Yeah, Ithaca… 

Dr. Ravi Akula: But obviously if they have any bigger need, any cardiac catheterization, stent or bypass surgery will transfer them to bigger center. 

John Harrison: Uh, Dr. Uh, Dr. Akula, uh, running outta time, uh, here, but, uh, just one last thing, uh, for the community, uh, what do you want them to know about the, the future of your department, uh, some of your goals, some, some things that you’re working on and, and working towards?

Dr. Ravi Akula: Yeah, we are here. In fact, we have very good support staff and very good number of providers here. We are providing all the services, including preventive care and the regular cardiology services. Please take care of your heart. Please take care of your general health. Don’t wait till it’s too late. So if we can avoid any heart attack, heart failure, all that, that is where the real money is so preventive care. That’s where the real focus should be. Obviously, if there is any question, talk to your primary doctors. They can refer you to our department, and we’ll take care of [00:06:00] all the cardiac needs. 

John Harrison: Perfect. Yeah. Well, uh, Dr. Ravi Akula, thank you so much for, for joining me here on X101. Uh, thank you for taking the time outta your day and calling in.

Dr. Ravi Akula: Thank you very much for having me. John Harrison: Of course. And for everyone listening at home, this has been John Harrison on X101.