After 10 years at our prior site and most of 30 years on the Los Robles Hospital campus, we have moved to a beautiful NEW building on the Thousand Oaks Surgical Hospital campus.  Better parking!  We will continue with our cardiovascular disease management programs, preventive cardiology, non-invasive assessment tools and, of course, our clinical research programs looking for new and innovative ways to manage cardiovascular disease.  For directions and flyer, click here!.

The guiding principle of the Ventura Heart Institute is that the best treatment of cardiovascular disease is its prevention. The emphasis has always been on wellness and prevention with the ideal care being proactive, rather than reactive, assessment and intervention.  The Ventura Heart Institute's mission is to provide patients with evidence-based strategies for the optimal and cost effective assessment and management of cardiovascular risks.  We also believe that clinical research improves clinical care so we have conducted over 100 clinical trials in new and novel cardiovascular therapies, with the goal of contributing to the improved care of patients everywhere.

Our last free public education program, "The Prevention of Heart Disease", was held on Saturday morning, 20 February 2010, at the Hyatt Westlake in Westlake Village, California attended by almost 300 attendees.  Besides the discussion of risk factors such as blood fat abnormalities and high blood pressure, we added a section on irrregular heart beasts and their management. The responses to this as well as our prior Symposia has been spectacularly positive with accolades to the faculties and content.  For photos of the program and list of faculty, please click here.  We will continue to strive to provide up-to-date information on heart and vascular disease to the public and our colleagues. 

Dr. Loh has been doing presentations on "Health Care Reform" to professional audiences over the next several months.  In addition, he was invited to lecture on "Harnessing Health Care Information Technology at the Point-of-Care to Improve Quality and Outcome" at the University of California - Berkeley, co-sponsored by the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), and the School of Public Health.  That lecture is available as a webcast at www.citris-uc.org or directly by clicking here (note that you may need headphones/ear buds or external speakers to hear the presentation adequately).

We believe that lifestyle modifications with proper nutrition, weight management, exercise and judicious use of appropriate medications used to expert-guided standards provide patients the greatest probability of a good outcome.  We provide cardiovascular screening for risk assessment, education programs and clinical research protocols in our quest to provide the most up-to-date options for our patients.  The American Heart Association updated its guidelines for prevention of heart disease in women.  You can download a copy of the complete recommendations by clicking here or clicking on the summary in Dr. Loh's Second Opinion column on the subject.

You may access Dr. Loh's prior Second Opinion newspaper columns and editorials by clicking on the link at the top of this page entitled "Second Opinion Columns".  You may contact Dr. Loh by e-mail by clicking here.

One important suggestion on the role of prevention is the Advance Healthcare Directive brought into tragic focus by the officious intermeddling of Congress.  The autonomy of the individual should overide political agendas and the paranoid ideation of those who purport that a patient or their family having a say in what happens to them as the end-of-life approaches is linked to some nefarious plot to terminate life.  Click the link above to learn what steps one can take to prevent a dignified end-of-life decision from becoming a legal circus or grist for political posturing.