February is Heart Month, raising awareness about cardiovascular disease prevention. Heart disease can take on many forms and often has subtle symptoms, including chest pressure or discomfort, sluggishness, lightheadedness, sudden dizziness and fatigue.
It’s important not to ignore these subtle signs and symptoms. If you are experiencing pressure, heaviness or pain in the chest, the arm, below the breastbone or in combination with sweating, nausea, extreme shortness of breath or irregular heartbeats, you may be having a heart attack. Call 911 immediately.
St. Joseph’s Hospital-South in Riverview recommends that you regularly monitor your blood pressure. With support from your health care team, you can lower your risk for heart disease and stroke. You can check your blood pressure at the doctor’s office, other medical locations, at home with a blood pressure monitoring device or for free at one of the wellness stations located in local Publix Super Markets.
The wellness stations conveniently provide you with free, interactive screenings giving you personal health stats of blood pressure, body weight and body mass index.
Learn more about St. Joseph’s Hospital-South’s heart and vascular services at https://stjosephssouthheart.org.
St. Joseph’s Hospital-South, part of the BayCare Health System, opened in February 2015 to bring high-quality health care services to Southern Hillsborough County and Northern Manatee County in an environment designed to help patients heal. St. Joseph’s Hospital-South features all-private suites and offers emergency care, an ICU, surgical services, imaging, oncology, cardiac catheterization, heart and vascular services, orthopedics, obstetrics, a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), pediatrics and more in a peaceful, relaxing and family-centered environment. The all-digital, state-of-the-art facility is specially designed to make visitors as comfortable as possible during their hospital experience.
The 223-bed hospital is located south of Tampa at 6901 Simmons Loop in Riverview. For more information, visit https://baycare.org/sjhs.
