Heart Health Fair features screenings, book authors

A Heart Health Fair Tuesday offers free screenings for cholesterol, blood pressure, peripheral arterial disease and body fat along with a host of educational events, including readings and discussion of “The Sublime Engine: A Biography of the Human Heart.”

Scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m., the fair hosted by Kalispell Regional Medical Center takes place at the Arts & Technology Building at Flathead Valley Community Center.

Book co-authors, cardiologist Dr. Thomas Amidon and his brother, noted novelist Stephen Amidon, will make presentations at the fair and will sign books. Stephen Amidon is slated to provided readings and discussion of “The Sublime Engine.”

Thomas Amidon and cardiac surgeon Drew Kirshner have lectures scheduled on heart disease and heart surgery. These two top specialists joined the hospital in the last year, expanding the range of heart procedures to encompass everything short of transplants.

Prior to joining the hospital, Amidon was cardiology section chief of Overlake Hospital in Bellevue, Wash. Kirshner came to Kalispell from Baltimore, where he practiced at Union Memorial Hospital, named one of America’s best hospitals for heart surgery.

The two physicians complement each other with Amidon specializing in stents and valvuloplasty procedures through the groin while Kirshner provides cardiac surgery including beating-heart bypass, aortic and mitral valve surgery.

Thomas Amidon said the Heart Health Fair provides a great place to showcase Northwest Healthcare’s comprehensive cardiac group, known as Rocky Mountain Heart and Lung.

“We want people to know what we’re doing,” he said. “If you have heart disease, you don’t need to go anywhere else.”

For more information, call 751-5389.