The Centennial Heart Center

Centennial is proud to offer a full compliment of cardiac care delivered by more than 50 cardiac physicians and surgeons. Whether you want advice to prevent heart disease or need interventional treatment for a crisis, our team of medical experts is committed to providing you with the best possible care for the best possible outcomes.

The Centennial Heart Center is designated as a Cardiac Center of Excellence by the Clinical Cardiovascular Management Network (CCMN) of HCA.  Centennial is one of only four hospitals from across all 165 HCA hospitals eligible for this designation.

Leadership in Cardiac Care

The Centennial Heart Center has a history of exploring new and better ways to perform heart surgery.  In fact, Centennial was the first hospital in Tennessee to perform minimally invasive bypass surgery in 1996, and to pioneer off-pump or “beating heart” bypass surgery.

Traditional coronary artery bypass operations require patients to be placed on a heart-lung machine and have the heart stopped to bypass around blocked heart arteries. Beating heart surgery is performed without the heart-lung machine and without stopping the heart.  Beating heart techniques lower the risks of stroke and blood transfusion associated with traditional bypass surgery.

Technology

Beating heart procedures aren’t the only area in which the Centennial Heart Center exhibits leadership and expertise.  It was the first hospital in Tennessee to use robotics—a brand-new, leading-edge technology—in heart surgery.  Centennial is also a host to a Robotic Training Center where teams of surgeons come from across the nation to observe and learn.

Robotic surgery uses a special 3-D scope and long, thin robotic instrument “arms” to see and work inside the chest without opening it.  Once the robotic system is inserted, the surgeon sits at a console and performs the surgery by manipulating controls like a virtual reality system. One benefit of this minimally invasive procedure, is quicker patient recovery and shorter hospital stays.

The technology is currently being used for procedures such as repairing mitral valves, inserting special pacemakers, correcting atrial fibrillation, closing holes between chambers of the heart and performing simple bypass operations with a small incision between the ribs rather than a large incision in the center of the chest.