WARREN Forum to start heart program

\The hospital will spend $2 million preparing for the new unit.
WARREN -- Open-heart surgery will be available at Forum Health Trumbull Memorial Hospital beginning in the spring.
The program will be an extension of Forum's Heart Hospital program at Northside Medical Center in Youngstown.
The doctors who started that program, Pyongsoo Yoon and Timothy Hunter, handled nearly 600 cases this year, including "beating heart" surgery and valve replacement.
"Both of these cardiac surgeons have earned reputations for performing state-of-the-art, complex procedures rivaling the work of their college's in this country's major cities," said N. Kristopher Hoce, president and CEO of Forum Health.
The cost: The hospital is spending $2 million on equipment and surgical suite renovations to accommodate the new heart unit.
Two additional cardiothoracic surgeons are also being recruited, hospital officials said.
Dr. Bill McCoy, senior vice president of medical affairs at Trumbull Memorial, said an analysis found that hundreds of Trumbull County residents go outside the area for heart procedures.
"They've expressed to us and through their physicians that they'd like to see the program available here," Dr. McCoy said.
Dr. Yoon, the director of cardiothoracic surgery at the Heart Hospital at Forum Health, was trained at the Medical College of Virginia and Eastern Virginia Graduate School of Medicine, and completed a fellowship at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh.
Hunter, the associate director, is also on the faculty at Northeast Ohio Universities College of Medicine.
He was trained at Brown University Medical School in Providence and Swedish Hospital Medical Center in Seattle.
He also completed a fellowship at Allegheny General.