Tom Stys, MD - Sanford Health News

COVID and the important connection to heart health

Alan Helgeson (host): Hello and welcome. You’re listening to the Health and Wellness podcast brought to you by Sanford Health. I’m your host Alan Helgeson with Sanford Health News. Our conversation today is about COVID-19 and the long-term effects on the heart. Our guest today is Dr. Tom Stys with Sanford Heart. Dr. Stys, as we get started today, why don’t you give us a little bit about your role and your background with Sanford Health?

Dr. Tom Stys: I believe it’s almost 20 years since I started at Sanford Health. It was my first job, in fact, after coming out of fellowship training in New York when I remember we came out with my wife, from New York, Long Island. And we came out to South Dakota for the first time ever in January. We did go ahead visit some small towns, USA, South Dakota middle of January, went blowing snow and …

Alan Helgeson (host): Knew you needed a coat.

Dr. Tom Stys: Yes, no question about that. And then, you know, we did see I that that’s, yes, it was an opportunity, opportunity for us to have our family, kids grow up in a Midwestern environment, culture that we very much appreciated, which is awesome. And I personally had an extremely successful career here as an interventional cardiologist, meaning that I found Sanford’s resources, and ambition, completely in pair with mine. We evolved in the Cardiovascular Institute, affiliated ourselves with Sanford School of Medicine, USD. In fact, we hold the chair position for the division of cardiology for USD School of Medicine. Five of our cardiologists are the core faculty. We have introduced anything that was innovative and permissible in the field of interventional cardiology, electrophysiology, and other areas of cardiology and brought it to the region. And I believe I can very confidently say that we have created the leading program in the Dakotas.

Alan Helgeson (host): So now being here 20 years associated and affiliated with Sanford and a big anniversary, a 10-year anniversary for the Sanford Heart hospital. So in that 10 years prior, you had a hand in really helping lay that foundation and what that looks like and building the program, correct, Dr. Stys?

Dr. Tom Stys: That’s correct. That’s correct. We are very blessed and fortunate to be sitting in our new heart hospital. Well, 10 years. So maybe I should not be using that, that term “new.” It’s, we’re so used to it now, but it’s a beautiful facility. I remember planning, designing with administration. I remember doing procedures with visiting interventional cardiologists and heart surgeons from, quite honestly, all over the world and I have not run across a single one of them that would not be most impressed when they came out here and saw our institution.

Alan Helgeson (host): Well, congratulations to you and your team and the program that you’ve built. And we’re talking about something today. There isn’t any part of medicine that over the last year, two years, that has not been touched by COVID-19 or coronavirus, and things that we’ve heard way too much about the last couple of years, and in interventional cardiology, you’re no different. Our topic today, we really wanna talk about the connection between COVID-19 and heart health, as we’re hearing that there are short and long term effects that COVID-19 can have on the heart. Can we just jump in right there and just from your expertise let’s talk about that, Dr. Stys.

Dr. Tom Stys: Yes, of course. It is most important to talk about COVID and how it affects patients with cardiovascular disease in many different ways, in fact. And, very early, in fact, in the pandemic, we realized that the fear among our patients and community was huge and appropriately so. However, there was too much of lack of recognition of cardiovascular disease and the scope of an issue that it carries it with itself, if not addressed, taken care of treated properly. And so statistically speaking, heart disease, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, stroke are still number one cause of death, period. And that’s talking about last – that’s our COVID year. COVID emerges number three cause of death.

We very quickly learned early in the pandemic that we will have patients that will be failing to come and seek attention. They will be having symptoms, which sometimes I feel patients are a blessing because at least those patients do get early symptoms of heart disease have a warning sign that allows them to identify an issue, seek attention and help, and perhaps prevent a severe disease that otherwise could be growing with, ultimately its consequences, unnoticed until it’s too late.

So very quickly early in the pandemic, we initiated a campaign of advising our patients, not to neglect cardiovascular disease. And I think that’s the first monitoring, which we very quickly recognized that COVID affects cardiovascular disease.

Our patients initially were afraid to come and seek attention that frequently was lifesaving. We started seeing many more patients coming with advanced forms of heart disease, coming in with advanced heart attack situations, where patients have coming in with warning signs of a heart attack. We fix things. They go home next day, all of a sudden show up with cardiac arrest going into cardiogenic shock. And that’s a completely different story.

My colleagues in cardiology, the division at their institutes, we very quickly identified and appropriately addressed where we even worked with departments of health and the state to make sure that we all had the same message. So then there are other ways where there’s no question COVID affected us. And the pure disease of COVID itself includes effects on heart/cardiovascular system.

And so indeed COVID does create circumstances in our body that can lead to increased frequency occurrence of clot formation, increased occurrence of heart attacks, some arrhythmias, inflammation of the heart muscle, and heart failure. So, there is a number of ways that the disease process itself also affects the hearts and results in bad outcomes.

COVID can affect us in many different ways. Too often, we do not link COVID disease syndrome with cardiovascular disease that COVID can cause directly. Not only COVID can affect outcomes of conventional atherosclerotic coronary artery disease, stroke disease syndromes, by, as I mentioned earlier, neglecting to get help, attention in a timely fashion, but also COVID itself affects cardiovascular system and can be a cause of exacerbation in the form of cardiovascular syndromes.

And for instance, yes, we can have an increased incidence of inflammation of heart muscle, myocarditis, heart failure. We can have increased incidence of stroke. We can have increased incidence of arrhythmias. We have a lot of patients that, after they recover from COVID, have long-term symptoms. And, sometimes it’s even tough to say is it’s relating COVID lung disease, it’s related to heart and consequences of the COVID syndrome associated with cardiovascular disease. Sometimes it’s tough to differentiate. Nevertheless, there’s clear association between COVID and cardiovascular disease. So COVID does affect the cardiovascular system directly.

But I believe that it’s, it’s also very important to recognize that COVID will affect our cardiovascular system in different indirect ways and we very well know that cardiovascular disease for instance, is a lifestyle disease. It’s lack of exercise, our extra weight, smoking, poor diet that are responsible perhaps for majority of cardiovascular disease. Interestingly, it’s a very preventable disease with that in mind, because how easy is it to eat less and exercise more and weigh less? Well, it’s easy to say, tough to do nevertheless, at least theoretically, it’s a very, a preventable disease, but it’s tough for us to do.

Now in COVID pandemic, unfortunately with the isolation, with the lack of outdoors activities, with lack of opportunities to socialize, go out and spend time in many diverse ways that would be perhaps healthier from heart’s perspective. Well, we ended up isolating ourselves, not only physically at home but also psychologically, much less interactions with others in the society.

Well, as by not going out for a routine walks to the mall, shopping, theater, movies, restaurants that stripped us from an opportunity that’s extremely important as far as healthy living. Unhealthy lifestyle behaviors that we have actually observed during the pandemic are increasing incidence of bad diet and extra weight, obesity.

I have to say that that just about every other patient comes to see me currently in the clinic, unfortunately when they step on the scale, the weight is in the wrong direction. They gain weight and it is always the same excuse. Well, I don’t go anywhere. I don’t do anything. I sit at home, watch TV. And the only thing to do is grab snack after snack and, which is sad, right? But very true. And that is a way in which COVID affected us last year. That’s not minor.

Another unfortunate, bad habit that we’ve noticed increased, increased incidents is alcohol consumption. You know, alcohol is not heart healthy. And there’s a clear association between the COVID pandemic and increase in the alcohol consumption that then leads to mental issues, more social issues, more problems, and definitely in a less heart healthy lifestyle than otherwise.

Missed medical visits is another way that COVID affected us very objectively. When we study our population here in South Dakota, there’s a big, big noncompliance you could say with otherwise necessary medical follow-ups. You know, whether you call it noncompliance or just, you know, not understanding the situation, definitely not a positive thing from cardiovascular disease. As I mentioned earlier, cardiovascular disease is still number one cause of death. So if I’m afraid of getting COVID and dying. You know what, I should be just as much or even more so afraid of having a heart disease. And so the fear of COVID should not really prevent me from getting attention, from cardiovascular perspective.

There has been an observed fear of hospitals. So no, I will not go to hospital and I’m not feeling well because that’s where I can get COVID more so than anywhere else. Again, the very false assumption, you know, and we very early in the pandemic made a big effort to make sure that it’s very clearly publicized in media across our state that no, it is probably one of the safest places where everybody’s compliance precautions are taken special, units are organized. And if anything, I think that you should feel safer going to see your doctor or be admitted to hospital for other, perhaps not COVID related issues, then going shopping to a grocery store. So, so it’s very interesting, but that fear of hospital was real. And it did I believe impact outcomes as far as our cardiovascular patients.

So as you can see, COVID also affected our patients from heart disease perspective indirectly.

Alan Helgeson (host): Is age impacting some of those effects that you’re seeing?

Dr. Tom Stys: Definitely age is a very pertinent factor, as far as outcomes of COVID. We find that that’s older patients have poor outcomes. Patients with established cardiovascular disease have worse outcomes. Well, our cardiovascular patients are the elderly patients. We very well have observed that younger populations, especially the teenagers, young people when they do get the COVID infection, their illness is not as severe. And again, whether it relates to us to the age itself or other comorbidities, tough to say, but as a cardiologist, I have to say that yes, age is very clearly recognized as a risk for worse disease course and worse outcomes.

And at the same time, yes, it is our elderly patients that have more cardiovascular disease, preexisting cardiovascular disease, such as coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, stroke history, those cardiovascular diseases themselves, if preexisting will make COVID disease worse.

Alan Helgeson (host): As a person that has been vaccinated, can you still be affected with heart health and heart issues through COVID even if you’re vaccinated?

Dr. Tom Stys: Yes, you can. It has been very clearly proven, however, that patients who have been fully vaccinated undergo much milder disease course and are much less likely to be hospitalized, are much less likely to die. Nevertheless, they can still be affected by COVID and have an acute illness. And so that’s where the recommendation has been. That even though you’ve been vaccinated, you still have to be cautious and careful.

Alan Helgeson (host): What kind of lingering symptoms are you seeing for people that already have existing heart issues?

Dr. Tom Stys: So, first of all, I would say that, as I mentioned earlier, you know, the symptoms of COVID too often mimic heart disease. And sometimes it’s tough to tell quite honestly in patients with preexisting cardiovascular disease, once they recover from COVID, are these still the symptoms lingering from COVID or are these symptoms really more relating to worsening of their underlying cardiovascular disease by COVID? So that’s a very challenging issue for us currently.

We see a lot of people coming to get rechecked after they had COVID with one of our cardiologists in the office. And, the reason is that the symptoms are frequently similar. Each time we had a wave of acute infections in the community, a few weeks later, we have a wave of patients who’ve recovered from COVID and coming for cardiovascular checkups. In those instances, we check patients very thoroughly.

I think it’s extremely prudent to be thorough and not miss progression of cardiovascular disease in patients that have recovered from COVID because as I said earlier, still cardiovascular disease is number one cause of death, and if you’re concerned with COVID, you should be concerned just as much or even more so from cardiovascular disease perspective.

Alan Helgeson (host): What advice do you have for someone who may be under a cardiologist’s care or has had heart concerns for some time that is maybe just recovering from COVID-19? Are there some specific things that you would say to this audience?

Dr. Tom Stys: Definitely. It’s a very good and a very important question. Symptoms of COVID frequently mimic symptoms of cardiovascular disease. COVID itself affects cardiovascular system. So not only you could say that in a way it is also a cardiovascular disease, but at the same time, the fact that you have COVID does not mean that nothing else coincidentally might be going on in your body.

So my advice would be to be aware of too easily, assuming that it’s COVID, I don’t need to worry about my cardiovascular health. Have a very low threshold to pick up the phone, call your doctor. There is nothing wrong, even if you’re on isolation, with having a phone conversation with a doctor, cardiologist, especially with preexisting cardiology condition, cardiac conditions. Discuss the symptoms and see if you need to be concerned or not neglecting symptoms that otherwise may be early signs of something bad happening with your heart, may result in your having not only COVID, but also presenting with a heart attack. And then it’s a very challenging situation.

Alan Helgeson (host): What can a person do to help prevent or lessen the possibility of long-term heart effects from COVID-19?

Dr. Tom Stys: I think I would resonate the CDC recommendation of getting vaccinated. That is the best way to, first of all, hopefully avoid the infection and disease altogether, but at the same time avoid the otherwise possibly grave consequences of severe illness and even dying of COVID. So get vaccinated.

Alan Helgeson (host): We’ve talked about, you know, people staying out and not getting routine appointments. Can you just share a little bit from your perspective as a cardiologist, the importance of heart and vascular screenings?

Dr. Tom Stys: Getting early attention in the course of cardiovascular disease is lifesaving. As I always say, it’s a very preventable disease, first of all, so you can prevent it altogether. And even if you start getting some atherosclerotic disease, plaques, mild plaques here, or there at that stage, you can still intervene and treat it very effectively where you might not even have any consequences of that plaque formation process throughout your life.

Cardiovascular diseases are very preventable and very treatable. The worst thing to do is not get attention when you’re affected. And that’s exactly where our community cardiovascular disease screening program fits. We have very effective, accurate, simple ways of identifying patients that’s a high risk of developing severe cardiovascular disease, whether it’s heart attack, whether it’s other forms of cardiovascular disease. So we should be using those tools. And that’s our screening program.

Alan Helgeson (host): Dr. Stys, thank you for taking time to join in this conversation about heart health and COVID 19. This episode is part of the Health and Wellness series by Sanford Health. For additional podcast series and topics, please click the podcast link on Sanford Health News. I’m Alan Helgeson. And thank you for listening.

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Genetics and cardiology partnering for heart health

Editor’s note: Sanford Health offers a DNA test called the Sanford preemptive genomic screening. At the time of this podcast recording, it was called the Sanford Chip.

Simon Floss (Host): Hello, and welcome to Innovations. A podcast series brought to you by the experts at Sanford health. You’re listening to our 15th episode, ‘a chip you can trust.’ I’m your host Simon Floss with Sanford Health News.

The practice of medicine goes far beyond clinic walls. The Innovations podcast looks at the biggest issues facing healthcare today. Each episode offers the opportunity to see the everchanging world of health and wellness through new eyes. Our leaders offer out-of-the-box solutions to some nagging questions.

Today we’re learning the ins and outs of how Sanford is using a patient’s genetics to calculate their risk for health problems later on in life. Our experts joining us to help paint that picture are Dr. Cassie Hajek, an internist geneticist and is the medical director of Sanford Imagenetics, and Dr. Tom Stys, who who’s the interventional cardiologist and medical director at Sanford Cardiovascular Institute.

Well, with those titles, it’s safe to say that both of you to stay pretty busy.

Dr. Tom Stys (Guest): Very true.

Dr. Cassie Hajek (Guest): Yes.

Host: So, in case people don’t know who you are, let’s have our audience get to know both of you a little bit. How long have both of you been at Sanford? What’s your job or jobs look like on a day-to-day basis?

Dr. Hajek: Well, I’ve been at Sanford since 2012? I started here as an internist, but took a leave a few years later and went for my medical genetics training. And since I’ve been back, I lead the Imageneticsprogram, and I have an adult genetics practice and internal medicine practice.

Host: Dr. Stys?

Dr. Stys: Well, I’ve had the privilege of being with Sanford for almost 20 years. Sounds like a lot of years, but to me it seems like I just started yesterday. 

Host: They really fly by, don’t they?

Dr. Stys: They do, and you know, it’s like he mentioned ever changing world of medicine. I like to think ever changing world of cardiology, interventional cardiology, and it’s been a very fascinating dynamic time. And I think that’s why it went by so fast.

Host: One of the things that we’re going to be talking about here today is called the Sanford Chip. This is an incredible topic that we’re covering for the people who don’t know, what exactly is the Sanford Chip?

Dr. Hajek: Yeah, so the Sanford Chip is Sanford’s preemptive genetic screening program, and really what it allows our patients is to do a genetic screen, which evaluates genes that are involved in drug metabolism. So, how our bodies you know, deal with medications, certain medications, and then patients are also offered the opportunity to get some disease predisposition risks. So, we have some of the genetic predispositions to cancer on the Sanford Chip. Some of the genetic predispositions to various hereditary cardiomyopathies, conditions that lead to enlarged heart. And so then once a patient goes through this program, the information that is taken from the chip is put into the medical record and it provides our physicians with some decision support that helps them use that information when it’s needed for the patient.

Host: Now, Dr. Stys, last time that we talked about this topic we uncovered the truth that you’ve recommended this to nearly 600 patients in your time, probably even more, if we’re being serious. How is the Chip such an innovative approach to medicine?

Dr. Stys: I am fortunate enough to specialize in practice this whole spectrum of cardiology from, you know, preventive care through maintenance and management of established disease to emergencies, interventional cardiologists, cardiology when patients come crashing and you know, a heart attack shock, et cetera. And, you know, it’s always bothered me that the scope of the problem is so serious.

It’s the number one killer, as far as health care is concerned than disease at the same time, it’s so preventable and treatable. And it’s just sad when you see a 50-year-old father you know, have a heart attack, cardiac arrest in the emergency room, you know, teenage kids crying, and then all of a sudden dropped on them from nowhere.

And at the same time, if you really think about it, this disease didn’t start that night or there it started a while back. And so, the question of how do we identify those patients at high risk of having a heart issue is extremely important. And so, we have the conventional medical predictors, you don’t diabetes, hypertension, obesity, lack of activity. We have the so-called calcium scoring that identifies plaque and those patients are in their 40s, 50s.

It’s useful, but we don’t have a tool that is very much personalized and identified. And then the individual from the beginning of their lifetime and their risk for heart disease. And when I get a question of when is the right time of when to start worrying about heart disease, my answer is always as early as possible. And so, having a genetic personalized information that will predispose that individual to life-threatening the most common condition that kills at the young age and being able to intervene in the preventive way is extremely important.

So, personalized medicine, genetic testing, I hope is the near future of our cardiovascular medicine identification of individuals, combination of that with preventive lifestyle modification, medical intervention prevention, and hopefully we’ll finally start making heart disease, not the number one killer. 

Host: Quick follow up question to that, you know when we were covering just a story about heart disease in general, a radiologic technologist, I remember she gave a very powerful quote. She said that, “heart disease doesn’t happen overnight.” You alluded to that in your answer. Off the top of your head, can you think of any other health systems that are doing anything like this, or is this truly just how innovative Sanford is?

Dr. Stys: We have been fortunate with Dr. Hayek to collaborate and actually be part of national, international efforts in research to further advance the field of cardiac genetics, specifically pharmacogenetics. And maybe I can let Dr. Hajek comment on that, but we have been privileged to co-author a very interesting groundbreaking paper.

Dr. Hajek: Yeah. We are fortunate at Sanford that I really think that this is an innovative program there. You know, this, this chip launched in 2018, and it is different and more advanced than I think most of the preemptive genetic screening programs that are out there today. There certainly are other programs that offer testing for disease predisposition or pharmacogenetic testing.

Nobody else really puts it together like we do. And no one else, no other health system has really implemented it and integrated it into the medical record in the way that we have, which is so key to the implementation of genomics in medicine, because it’s not new to everyone, but it’s not something that everyone’s doing on a day-to-day basis.

Not every physician is a geneticist. And so, it’s really important that if we’re going to provide genetic information back to our physicians, to care for our patients, we need to be able to help them with that information and the interpretation. And so that’s a really key piece of our program that sets us apart from the rest. And as Dr. Stys alluded to, we are now working with other collaborators across the country and even across the world actually to advance our understanding of the contributors, the genomic contributors to disease, particularly as it relates to heart disease.

Host: So, a couple of terms that we’ve already been throwing around here today, I just want to make sure that everybody knows exactly what they are, a disease predisposition and PGX testing. What are those? 

Dr. Hajek: Right. So, and this is always a question that comes up with the genetic terms. They’re a bit unfamiliar. And so, we try to find ways to talk about them that’s a little bit more accessible, but disease predisposition means that this can come in a lot of different ways.

For example, we talk about a cancer predisposition condition. So that’s something like lynch syndrome or hereditary breast and ovarian cancer due to BRCA1 and 2, there are hereditary cardiomyopathies, so that’s a disease predisposition to cardiomyopathy. And so, these are things that come from a mutation in just a single gene, and we can test for those mutations.

PGX is just the shorthand version of pharmacogenetics, which is a mouthful. And again, it goes back to how do our genes impact how our bodies deal with medications? 

Host: Fascinating. How does the Sanford chip through disease predisposition and PGX impact patient care? 

Dr. Hajek: So, on the disease predisposition side, what we’re finding as you know, more and more people get genetic testing is that some of these rare diseases are maybe not as rare as we initially thought. And so, there are still a number of individuals out there who have a diagnosis that they are not aware of because they haven’t gone through a genetic testing program. Now this isn’t relevant for everyone, but familial hypercholesterolemia.

If we’re talking about the cardiology space this is a really good example of a condition where historically we would use LDL cholesterol, your bad cholesterol to maybe target somebody who could be at risk for having familial hypercholesterolemia.

I’m going to say FH from now on less of a mouthful. But, we’re seeing there’s a bit, a lot of data that shows those patients may not have a really high LDL cholesterol, like you would expect. It might be just kind of on the high end of normal, or maybe just a touch higher than you would expect, and they actually have FH, but before you wouldn’t have maybe considered that, now we know that we can do genetic testing.

It’s a lot more accessible since the cost has gone down significantly, and we can identify those patients so that we can get them the treatment that they need to reduce their very increased risk for heart disease.

Host: Dr. Stys, anything that you would want to add to that?

Dr. Stys: I think that’s a pharmacogenetic testing has made a huge difference in patient management in our world, especially of interventional cardiology. We are one of the few sites in the country that offer genetic testing to see the patient, given a blood thinner, to protect them from a stent, placing their heart quilting off and causing a disastrous consequence is going to work. So unfortunately, most places do not have a way of testing.

Whether a patient is sensitive to Plavix is the name of the medication. It is used routinely in the cath lab after stent placement, stenting of coronary arteries or fixing of a blockage in the hearts is the most commonly performed surgery procedure in the world. So, you can imagine there’s lots of patients. About a third of patients actually will not be sensitive like a normal person.

So, we’re giving them a medication that we think is protecting them and letting the stent heal up, but it’s actually not working as well as we think. So, we have implemented Plavix genome typing over the, I would say five, six, seven years ago, and it is a standard of care in the cath lab.

That’s very progressive. So, that’s just one of the many examples where pharmacogenetic testing has made a big impact, you know, on our patients’ outcomes.

Host: Switching gears here, polygenic risk scores – why and how do we develop these?

Dr. Hajek: So, another mouthful, I guess, polygenic risk score. So, we know that many common diseases are impacted by our genetics. You know, that because people whose parent has heart disease are at increased risk, than if their parents didn’t have heart disease and so small genetic changes that impact many different genes can impact this, either increase or decrease that risk.

Historically, we haven’t really been able to quantify that, but because genetic testing has become so much more accessible, the cost is declining and we’re able to do a lot at one time, we can actually quantify those small genetic changes that contribute to an individual’s risk and then a polygenic risk score actually summarizes the impact of those changes to say a person’s genomic risk for a common disease such as coronary artery disease is this.

And, and it can put them in a high genomic risk category or a low genomic risk category, or somewhere in the middle. It actually allows you to put you put people in a risk category as to how they compare to others. And so, it really is another way to add to risk stratification for common diseases, which is really exciting. Because there’s always a piece of piece of that puzzle that we hadn’t been able to look at before. And to we’re now able to do this with the polygenic risk score. I don’t know if you want to add? 

Dr. Stys: Sure. So, as I mentioned earlier, heart disease is a huge problem for us and I look very much forward to some kind of a genetic risk scoring process, that’s going to be very reliable and in a reliable fashion, identify patients at highest risks or that we can start intervening at their childhood age and hopefully prevent the bad heart disease in the future. We have already started looking into that at Sanford and we have initial patients there and they’re old and consented to validates the information that we have already acquired through our research and others. I hope that’s in the near future, we will be able to provide a genetic risk score into, to just about any patient who walks into the door and will benefit not just to them individually, but actually the whole family and future generations

Host: In both of your opinions and expertise, what does the average person need to know as far as where Sanford is at within the polygenic risk space? 

Dr. Stys: From a cardiovascular perspective, as a preventative and interventional cardiologist specialist is the way I like to view myself, I really can’t wait to have a final product of our efforts where yes, you will come up to our front desk and we will offer genetic risk scoring from a simple blood test to you and your whole family. At this point, we are at a validation stage where it’s still a research project, but I do hope that in the near future, it will be a standard of care. 

Dr. Hajek: Yeah, I would say I would just second that we’re very close and cardiovascular disease is probably the foremost area where we see the greatest amount of evidence for the use of polygenic risk scores for patients to help identify those at greater risk. So, it’s really exciting that we have a team of cardiologists led by Dr. Stys that we have the genetic testing capacity and the administrative support to put these kinds of tools together. And, I really see the polygenic risk score for heart disease is opening the door for looking at polygenic risk for other health conditions. For example, breast cancer or osteoporosis. There are just a number of areas where it will provide some really exciting clinical utility for our patients.

Host: One last thing I want to touch upon is, you know, how do patients undergo the Sanford Chip?

Dr. Hajek: So, it’s so it’s a blood test. And essentially if a patient is interested, they can just ask their provider, their primary care provider. They can also go online and indicate that they’re interested and they’ll get a message through their, My Chart. So, they need to be on My Chart. We sometimes have specials, but it’s most typically offered at $49, which is significantly less than you’ll see other genetic test options out there. And the information that you get back from that Sanford Chip lives in your medical record. So, it gets used over a lifetime. Yep. With Sanford. Yeah.

Dr. Stys: Yeah. From my perspective, as a practicing physician that offers those in my clinic, I’m most impressed with how well our genetic colleagues have developed the process where it hardly impacts any patient flow, so to say, in the clinic. And, at the same time, I do not believe it’s even a significant burden for patients, because usually we do genetic counseling and everything that’s necessary, as far as consenting to Chip while patients are waiting for other orders to be done. And so, I think it’s an additionally entertaining process, an interesting one for our patients. So, we appreciate that. 

Host: Well, Dr. Hajek and Dr. Stys, thank you both so much for your time today. I know, especially right now, everybody’s busy so really thank you for sitting down and doing this.

Dr. Hajek: Thank you for having us.

Dr. Stys: Thank you.

Host: Before we wrap up today, a couple of housekeeping items. If you’re looking to hear more on how the Sanford chip has helped the patient firsthand, we’re working on a testimonial story that you are not going to want to miss. You can look for that story and more stories at news.sanfordhealth.org.

Also, a reminder that the Sanford Health Innovations podcast is now available on your favorite podcast apps like Apple and Spotify, as well as our website, Sanford Health News. If you enjoy this conversation, follow us, give us a thumbs up, and share your comments. We do love hearing from you and hope you find these conversations insightful.

Thanks for listening. I’m Simon Floss with Sanford Health News.