Three Heart Surgeons Serve Metro Area

Northwest Arkansas has only three cardiac surgeons, but that’s considered adequate for the area’s population.

Recruiters say cities need one heart surgeon for every 80,000 to 100,000 people, said Dr. James Counce, one of the local heart surgeons. The 2000 census counted 311,000 people in Washington and Benton counties combined.

But just 13 years ago, area patients had to travel to Tulsa or Little Rock for heart surgery. If a patient had a heart attack, crucial minutes were lost in the transit time to one of these cities.

In 1988, Dr. John Weiss moved from Little Rock to become Northwest Arkansas’ first heart surgeon. Weiss was recruited by Dr. Charles Inlow, a cardiologist, to work at Springdale Memorial Hospital, which is now Northwest Medical Center.

In 1990, Dr. Russ Wood joined Weiss’ clinic, and Counce came on board in 1993. Now, Northwest Arkansas Cardiovascular Surgery Clinic is unofficially known as Weiss, Wood and Counce. The three partners do heart surgeries for both Northwest Medical Center and Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville.

Counce, 44, grew up in Memphis and played on the University of Arkansas basketball team from 1974 to 1978. After graduation, he served as an assistant to then UA basketball coach Eddie Sutton until he left for medical school in Little Rock in 1982.

Following medical school, Counce did his residency at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a cardiothorascic fellowship at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

Counce said Northwest Arkansas’ 10 cardiologists make life easier for the area’s cardiac surgeons. Now, in addition to diagnosis, cardiologists can perform angioplasty (repairing or replacing damaged blood vessels) and insert stents (small, expandable wire mesh tubes) in arteries to keep them from collapsing and to keep blood flowing from the heart. That cuts down on the number of surgeries that have to be performed, Counce said.

“We depend on the cardiologists for the diagnosis of coronary artery disease and depend on their referrals for our surgeries,” Counce said. Because of help from the cardiologists, “the number of open heart cases we’ve done over the past three or four years has been relatively stable,” he said.

Counce wouldn’t say how many heart surgeries he and his two partners perform, but he said they stay busy. The team always has to be prepared for emergency situations.

“It’s not unusual for us to see someone who needs surgery right away,” Counce said.