Atlanta Career Profile: Why I love my job
Dr. George A. Kramer, Interventional cardiologist
Friday, October 31, 2008
What I do: Dr. George A. Kramer puts his heart into his work as he works on other people’s hearts.
As an interventional cardiologist with Cardiovascular Medicine P.C. in Marietta, Kramer, 51, performs heart catheterizations and balloon angioplasties on patients, installs stents and makes sure his patients are recovering and making heart-healthy changes to their lives.
Karl Ritzler / Special
Dr. George A. Kramer says that in his job, he and the patient make a lifelong commitment to each other.
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What he doesn’t do is open-heart surgery. That is the specialty of cardiac surgeons, he said.
“We have treatments for heart disease, but we don’t have cures,” Kramer said.
Catheterizations involve threading a thin tube through a patent’s arteries to look into or unblock an obstruction in the heart, coronary arteries or elsewhere. Often it’s done as part of an angioplasty, where a tiny balloon is inflated in the artery to clear the obstruction and a stent — or mesh tube — is installed to keep the artery open. Sometimes, Kramer said, he uses a rotoblator, which he described as a “roto-rooter” with a diamond-tipped burr, to break up deposits in an artery.
Kramer said every patient’s anatomy is different, and “you don’t really know what you’ll find or what challenges you’ll face.”
Just because a patient has a stent, he said, “That doesn’t mean he won’t have a blockage somewhere else.”
That’s where the emphasis on diet, exercise and long-term follow-up comes in.
“The patient and I have a lifelong commitment to each other and to their hearts,” he said. “I’ve accumulated a lot of friends over 16 years.”
Kramer is usually performing procedures in the “cath lab,” seeing emergency patients or making his rounds at WellStar Kennestone Hospital three days a week, and he spends two days in his office, encouraging patents to get on the treadmill and aspirin therapy and off cigarettes and high-fat, high-calorie diets.
What got me interested in this: Originally, Kramer said, he wanted to be a dentist, but his father, who owned a foundry, said dentists were too dependent on their hands and he might not be able to practice if he was injured. Kramer chose medical school instead.
When he was on a cardiac rotation while a resident in internal medicine, Kramer said, “I just thought it was fascinating.”
Angioplasty was in its infancy in the 1980s, and Kramer said it was miraculous that a patient could have a balloon procedure “and walk out of the hospital without chest discomfort. They really got their life back again.”
Best part of my job: “The relationships I’ve formed with my patients over time,” he said. “I see improvements in their lives from what I’ve been able to do for them in the cath lab.”
Most challenging part: “Convincing patients to make lifestyle changes to protect their cardiac health, like quitting smoking and eating right,” Kramer said. “Too often, people look to a pill for the answers.”
What people don’t know about my job: “The sense of frustration you can experience when you are unable to save someone’s life,” Kramer said.
What keeps me going: “The challenges that every day, it’s something new,” he said. “A new patient, a new kind of arterial blockage I haven’t seen that I can approach and fix, technological developments. There’s always something new to learn — a new device, medicine or technical skill. I love the challenge of always growing professionally.”
Preparation needed for this job: You have to be conscientious, have good manual dexterity and good hand-eye coordination, Kramer said.
In addition, a doctor needs to be compassionate, be empathetic and be able to identify with each patient, from a homeless person to the executive of a major corporation. “You have to develop rapport and trust of the patient so they are confident that what you do in the cath lab and afterward is in their best interest.”
It takes a lot of training to become a doctor, in addition to being licensed by the state and certified by various specialties.
Kramer spent four years earning a bachelor’s degree in biology at Loyola University in Chicago, four years of medical training at Chicago Medical School, three years’ residency in internal medicine at Ohio State University, three years in a general cardiology fellowship at Emory University and an additional year in an interventional cardiology fellowship at the Minneapolis Heart Institute. Ongoing training is required to maintain certifications.
He has been with Cardiovascular Medicine for 16 years since completion of medical school and fellowships.
- By Karl W. Ritzler, for ajcjobs. Got an interesting job that you love? E-mail your story to jobseditor@ajc.com.
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