Dr. Annabelle Volgman

NEIGHBORS WITH HEART

Cardiologist and LCA member Annabelle Santos Volgman always wears red. Sure, it looks great against her dark hair and eyes, but there’s more to the color than looking good. Ten years ago, Volgman

LCA member, Dr. Annabelle Volgman

vowed to wear red until fewer women were dying of heart disease than men.

Dr. Volgman, who practices at Rush University Medical Center, has lived on the 1900 block of Mohawk Street for 24 years, drawn to the area because of its many parks. With husband Keith, CEO of NorthPoint Capital, she raised two children there, hosted countless parties and spent sun-filled days at Bauler Playlot. That playground figured largely in family life: for photos with their newborns, as a place for the children to run, bike, scooter, swing — and rollerblade down the slide, which called for an ambulance and twenty stitches!

Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the world, and more women die from it than men. Dr. Volgman made it her life’s work to figure out why. She created the Rush Heart Center for Women in 2003, where patients are treated individually and holistically. (She treats men, too.) Nutrition, exercise, medicines, surgery and counseling reverse heart disease in 80 percent of her patients.

“It’s not enough to prescribe beta blockers and send them home. I listen, and I don’t dismiss the non-medical. I make a point to touch, to hug. I want my young doctors to see that it’s okay to be warm, to ask about family, to ask about work, to ask ‘Why is your blood pressure so high today? What’s going on?” The Rush Heart Center for Women isn’t so much a place as it is a way of practicing medicine. Patients meet with a doctor, nurse practitioner, dietician and specialists, such as psychologists who treat obesity, anxiety, depression. “What we eat and what we do can cause heart disease,” she notes. Dr. Volgman sees 1,000 heart center patients annually, six days per week. She formalized care for women because patients were arriving in dangerously poor health, their symptoms misdiagnosed or ignored by other doctors because the standard of care was designed for men.

: Dr. Volgman, husband Keith and son Robert in Bauler Park in 1992.

A ten year National Institutes of Health study completed in 2006 showed that, in women, cholesterol plaque spreads evenly throughout the artery wall; an angiogram would read clear. Symptoms are unlike the “Hollywood” heart attack men tend to experience. Instead, there’s a constellation of small warnings: fatigue, pain, shortness of breath, indigestion. Treatment is the same: a combination of diet and exercise, medicines, surgery. The challenge is to educate physicians and women to recognize these symptoms as signs of heart disease.

Dr. Volgman grew up in the Philippines, surrounded by extended family. As a girl, she kept company and ran small errands for relatives enfeebled by disease. By age eight, she decided to become a doctor. At 12 she emigrated with her family to New York City, where she she tested into a top public school, a life-changing experience.

She earned a B.A. in biology and chemistry at Barnard College, continued to Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and did her residency in internal medicine at University of Chicago Medical Center. She landed a fellowship in cardiology/cardiac electrophysiology at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. In 1990, she joined Rush, where she is professor of medicine and medical director of the Rush Heart Center for Women.

She and Keith have been married 27 years. Son Robert, 23, is a stock options trader and graduate of Brown University. Daughter Caroline, 19, is a sophomore at Vanderbilt University.

Daughter Caroline, now 19, playing near Bauler Park as a child.

Dr. Volgman cooks for family and friends, reads with a book club, walks the lakefront, kayaks. She’s an opera buff, theater goer, dance fan. Above all, she loves to travel, to experience different cultures. She runs on very little sleep and is known for late night emails offering life advice or research topics.

Taking her message outside the hospital is an integral part of Dr. Volgman’s work, which she does without pay. In her signature red, she lectures at corporate and private events, churches, schools, grocery stores: anywhere she can spread the word that heart diseases is the leading cause of death — and can usually be reversed.

Anne Moore is a member of LCA ‘s Board of Directors and serves as Chair of the Zoning & Planning Committee.

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