Penn Laird: Welcome to Pediatric Insights, advances in Innovations with Children's Health, where we explore the latest in pediatric care and research. I'm your host, Dr. Penn Laird, II cardiologist with Pediatric Heart Specialist, a Children's Healthcare Network partner. Today I'm speaking with my fellow colleague, Dr. Andrew Lashus, cardiologist with Pediatric Heart Specialist, a Children's Healthcare Network partner who specializes in pediatric outpatient cardiology. So Dr. Lashus, first of all, Welcome.

Andrew Lashus: Thank you.

Penn Laird: Tell me a little bit about your background.

Andrew Lashus: well, I've been a pediatric cardiologist now for well over 20 years. I started out as an interventional cardiologist at Cook Children's, where I was for about, 11, 12 years. And then I moved over to do interventional cardiology at the children's hospitals here in Dallas. About nine years ago, my wife and I decided we were gonna do something totally different, and we went up to billings, Montana, and there I started, practicing general outpatient pediatric cardiology and was there until just this past year when we moved back to Dallas and joined Pediatric Heart Special.

Penn Laird: That's a very interesting professional course.

Andrew Lashus: I would agree.

Penn Laird: Talk to me a little bit about the differences as an interventional cardiologist versus a general outpatient cardiologist.

Andrew Lashus: it's really a completely different world. As an interventional cardiologist, almost all of my work was done in a hospital setting, doing the interventional heart catheterization procedures. I did have an outpatient clinic once a week. Most of those patients were patients with known structural heart defects, the kind of defects that I might end up doing a procedure on. I did not, see a lot of the other diagnosis or do a lot of the other screening evaluations for concerns for pediatric heart disease, which makes up a lot of what, a general, outpatient pediatric cardiologist does.

Penn Laird: I'm really interested to hear more about your practice in Montana. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Andrew Lashus: Well you know, that medical community is a lot different than the community we have here in the, Dallas area or probably throughout most of Texas. It's a generally remote location in general. And, there is not a lot of pediatric subspecialty care in the state. So, most pediatric subspecialty care, comes into the state on a part-time basis, or families have to travel out of the state for that care. I was one of just a few pediatric cardiologists in the state, and we drew patients from a very wide geographical area. Many patients would have to drive hours to get to us, and yet we're always very willing to do it.

And, the community there, was as the community here, is very appreciative of having a subspecialist that they could get to without having to travel, well beyond the state. That practice was, very much an outpatient practice. There's no children's hospital in Montana, so any child with any heart disease requiring hospital care would be transported out of state. but on the other hand, we did see, and I looked after kids with all the different forms of heart disease that we see here just in a again, a strictly outpatient setting.

Penn Laird: So you were really almost out on an island when you were working in Montana, despite it being the fifth largest state in the country, you were fairly isolated in your practice. You didn't really have immediate access to, higher level surgical care or sub subspecialists, did you?

Andrew Lashus: I completely agree. Yes. I was by myself and, I mean, I did have access by phone, to sub sub-specialists at the regional children's hospitals. But unlike what we have available to us, through children's health, I did not have ready access to all the various experts in the, sub subspecialty areas of, cardiology, cardiac surgeons. It made for a very different overall practice than, we have here.

Penn Laird: So you come down here to Dallas and now you're part of pediatric heart specialists and children's health and things are definitely. How do they differ from what you did in Montana?\

Andrew Lashus: Well, I, I think, for me personally, I have, partners I have ready access to some really great fellow cardiologists that can help out in the moment with any clinical issues I might have. I also have ready access to the full gamut of pediatric heart specialists through Children's Health. And that really enhances the care that we can provide for the kids and their families when you can quite seamlessly work with other subspecialists, to help, with the care of a child.

Penn Laird: Yeah, I totally agree. It, really, amazing to work in a center like this, where you have, availability for interventional ca services, electrophysiology, heart failure, heart transplant services, everything you, you could want. So it's definitely a really nice system to work in. So are you seeing any trends or noteworthy topics in the field of pediatric cardiology right now and particular in, what we do right here at Pediatric Heart Specialists?

Andrew Lashus: I think what we're seeing and what we're responding to is the huge growth. Of, this whole area, this whole region with a, ever increasing need for access to what we can do, what we can provide. And our response to that has been to add physicians to this practice and then increase our outreach presence throughout the whole area. And we have outreach clinics not only in the, immediate Dallas area, but in what would be considered the, Fort Worth area and, east Texas where we've been for years, as well as, again, number of other locations, scattered outside of the, strict confines of Dallas and Forth Worth.

Penn Laird: That's great. Well, one final question for you. What do you find to be the most rewarding aspect of your job?

Andrew Lashus: I think it's working with the kids and their families. I've, always been fascinated by the heart and, conditions affecting the. and found it very rewarding to be able to help children, with, the various heart conditions that we see, but also working with the kids and families where there's just a concern there might be a heart problem and, working through that evaluation. And most of the time being able to tell the family, the child that their heart is normal. I mean, that's a great feeling. And I do think we get a lot of positive feedback. I get a lot of positive feedback from the families and the kids in those interactions. It really makes this just a great profession for me and this is a great place to practice because, of just all the positivity that have both within the practice of all the staff, but also in our interactions with all the kids and their families.

Penn Laird: I totally agree, and, Andrew, it's been great having you in our practice for the last several months and I look forward to working with you for several more years to come. So thanks so much for joining.

Andrew Lashus: I definitely look forward to it. I said when I was coming back to this area. There was really gonna be only one group that I wanted to work with that, and really hoped they'd have a position for me. And now that I'm here, I think this is exactly what I was hoping it was going to be. And yes, I definitely look forward to being here long term.

Penn Laird: Great. Well, thank you Dr. Lashus and thanks for listening to this episode of Pediatric Insights. You can find more information about the Heart Center at Children's Health by visiting children's.com/heart. If you found this podcast to be helpful, please share it and check out the entire podcast library for more topics of interest to you. Thanks again for listening.