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With the help of donor support, Barnes-Jewish Hospital’s Heart and Vascular Center continuously ranks among the best in the nation, a beacon of hope for patients like Nathan Olsen. “Barnes-Jewish heart surgeons are among the few who can perform bypass surgery using veins from the chest rather than the legs. It was a blessing I was sent to St. Louis,” Nathan says. 

On June 11, BJC HealthCare marked a significant milestone for the Barnes-Jewish Hospital campus renewal project with the Plaza West Tower topping out ceremony.

Because Dr. Kouchoukos feels so passionately about research and training the next generation, he established The Nicholas T. Kouchoukos, MD, Endowed Fellowship in Cardiothoracic Surgery at The Foundation for Barnes-Jewish Hospital in 2018.

“We need to train cardiothoracic surgeons who are both good surgeons and good clinical investigators,” Dr. Kouchoukos says. “It’s critical to have people in the field who are innovative, continue to push the limits, and make advances that enhance patient care.”

Heart failure is a leading cause of disability in the United States, contributing to more than 35% of all deaths from cardiovascular disease. Nearly a million new cases are diagnosed annually. In the last few years, we have uncovered important links between immune system activation and the progression of heart failure.

Most people have to visit an average of seven different doctors and face several years of misdiagnoses to finally discover they have a rare condition known as thoracic outlet syndrome, or TOS. Shana Baldwin lived that painful experience and is now trying to change that for others.