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Pfirman helps Parkersburg Rotary Club get the pulse of Cardiac MRI technology

PARKERSBURG -- Cardiac MRI is a new tool available locally to look at the heart and help diagnose potential problems.

Dr. Kristopher Pfirman spoke Monday before the Parkersburg Rotary Club regarding a new service available at Parkersburg Cardiology Associates (PCA). He has been with PCA for over four months.

PCA launched cardiac MRI last Tuesday with the first two procedures done locally at the WVU Medicine Camden Clark Medical Center. The scans are done with a Siemens MRI machine with a 1.5 Tiles magnet.

"It gives you an advanced assessment of the heart and the major blood vessels that come out of it as it tells us what that cardiac tissue is made up of," Pfirman said, adding that has not been something they have been able to do with other kind of scans.

The scans are done to see a number of infiltrated diseases such as Hemochromatosis, a disorder in which extra iron builds up in the body to harmful levels, and other heart ailments and genetic inherited diseases.

"A lot of these things we have had to refer out and now we can try to diagnose these things in house," Pfirman said.

Currently, the scans and assessments are being done every Tuesday with three scheduled for today. Pfirman said the scans take around 45 minutes each, on average. They want to be able to scan four each Tuesday for the couple of months with each day being booked.

"It shows that the demand is here," Dr. Pfirman said.

He is interacting with patients throughout the scan, asking them to hold their breath for short periods and so on.

"I am there every time these scans are being done, watching these images coming through and working with the tech to get different pictures done to make sure we appropriately diagnose these patients," Pfirman said.

He compared the magnet to a radio that he is trying to tune into a particular frequency that will generate echoes which form the images he looks at when looking for irregularities.

There is no radiation involved in the process.

Pfirman is the only one currently trained to read these scans at Camden Clark and PCA.

"This is not a screening tool, it is a diagnostic tool." Pfirman said. "It augments something that is already here.

"Will it replace the heart catheterization? No it will not."

Obesity is prevalent in the area as well as heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and more. This system allows him to get good clear images from a variety of patients, he said, adding it will expand into other medical fields.

"Cardiac MRI is the number-one gold standard to determine what someone's heart function is," Pfirman said.

John Vickers, CEO of Parkersburg Cardiology Associates, said they have been busy with heart related issues over the last year. January 2022 was the busiest they have been in 50 years, but January 2023 surpassed it by over 20%.

"There is a lot of heart disease in the area," he said. "We are growing and adding doctors with different skill sets.

"We are growing to keep up with the demands here."

Many people do not want to go elsewhere to have these kind of procedures done and will tend to avoid them if they have to drive over an hour to have something done then go through the procedure itself and have to drive back.

Having cardiac MRI here helps open up diagnostics for various disease processes that they would have had to refer out to different clinics in places like Cleveland, Morgantown or Charleston.

"This is a way we can keep patients here in their backyard to further and advance cardiac care," Pfirman said.

Brett Dunlap can be reached at bdunlap@newsandsentinel.com