Cardiologist in Tarzana, CA

Our San Fernando Valley office is at 18226 Ventura Blvd, Ste 102, Tarzana, CA 91356, on the main Ventura Boulevard corridor and only a short distance from Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center. For most central-Valley residents that is a quick, familiar drive rather than a trip across town. On-site parking is available for patients, and the office is on well-served bus lines along the Boulevard. Call 818-905-5904 and our staff will give you directions, let you know what to bring, and confirm your appointment time. Keeping cardiology on Ventura Boulevard is deliberate: your consultation, testing, and follow-up all happen in one accessible place.

It depends on your insurance. Most PPO plans let you schedule directly with our Tarzana cardiologists, while many HMO plans require a referral from your primary care physician first. CACVI accepts many major PPO and Medicare plans; call our office to verify your specific coverage before your visit, and our staff will check your plan's rules so you are not surprised at check-in. A referral is usually an administrative step rather than a medical hurdle, and we routinely help Valley patients coordinate the paperwork with their primary care doctor. If you are between primary care physicians, we can still evaluate your heart and help point you toward local resources.

Most of the common cardiac work-up is done on site at 18226 Ventura Blvd. That includes electrocardiograms (EKG), echocardiography (a heart ultrasound that shows how well the chambers and valves are working), treadmill and pharmacologic stress testing, and Holter or event monitoring to record your rhythm over hours or days. We also perform vascular ultrasound and ankle-brachial index testing. Keeping these in Tarzana matters because it spares you separate trips to different imaging centers across the Valley for each test. Only highly specialized procedures, such as cardiac catheterization in a hospital lab, are referred out, and we arrange and coordinate those for you.

They serve different roles that work together. Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center is the hospital: it handles emergencies, admissions, and inpatient procedures around the clock. CACVI is an outpatient cardiology and vascular office focused on the scheduled side of heart care — evaluating symptoms, running diagnostics, diagnosing disease, and managing conditions like hypertension, arrhythmia, and heart failure over months and years. Many patients use both: they come to us for ongoing office care and, if they ever need hospital-level treatment, we coordinate directly with the hospital so the team there is working from records we already hold. Having the two only minutes apart on and near Ventura Boulevard makes that hand-off smooth.

The 2017 ACC/AHA Blood Pressure Guideline defines Stage 1 hypertension as 130–139/80–89 mm Hg and Stage 2 as 140/90 mm Hg or higher, measured properly on more than one occasion. Many people first learn their numbers are high at a pharmacy or a routine visit and do not act on it. Because uncontrolled blood pressure silently strains the heart, kidneys, brain, and arteries, a cardiology evaluation is reasonable if your readings are consistently in Stage 2, if you already have heart disease or diabetes, or if your pressure is hard to control on medication. At our Tarzana office we confirm the diagnosis, look for organ strain with an echocardiogram, and tailor treatment to your overall risk.

Atrial fibrillation (AFib) is an irregular, often rapid rhythm in the upper chambers of the heart. It can feel like fluttering, racing, or skipped beats — or cause no symptoms at all. It matters because, per American Heart Association guidance, the quivering upper chambers let blood pool and form clots that can travel to the brain and cause a stroke; AFib is associated with roughly a fivefold increase in stroke risk. We use EKG and extended rhythm monitoring to detect it, then estimate your stroke risk with tools such as the CHA2DS2-VASc score to decide whether blood-thinning therapy, along with rate or rhythm control, is appropriate. Catching silent AFib early can prevent a disabling stroke.

Use time and severity as your guide. The 2021 AHA/ACC Chest Pain Guideline treats chest pain or pressure lasting more than a few minutes — especially with sweating, nausea, shortness of breath, or pain radiating to the arm, jaw, or back — as a possible heart attack that requires calling 911 right away. Do not drive yourself and do not wait to "see if it passes"; from Tarzana, paramedics can route you to Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana. Brief, fleeting twinges, discomfort clearly tied to heartburn, or stable symptoms you have had for a while are reasonable to bring to a scheduled visit. When in doubt, err toward 911; a heart attack is time-critical.

For most adults, the 2018 AHA/ACC Cholesterol Guideline supports checking a lipid panel roughly every four to six years when risk is low, and more often — often yearly — if you have diabetes, established heart disease, a strong family history, or you are on cholesterol-lowering therapy that needs monitoring. Cholesterol matters because LDL particles are the raw material of the plaque that clogs coronary arteries, and that buildup is usually silent for years. For patients whose risk is borderline, the guideline also supports a coronary artery calcium (CAC) score as a tie-breaker. We use your lipid results, together with blood pressure and other risks, to decide whether a statin or other therapy is warranted.

Yes. Good cardiology is a partnership with your primary care physician, not a replacement for it. We send visit notes, test results, and our treatment plan back to your primary care doctor so everyone is working from the same chart, and we welcome referrals and questions from Tarzana and Valley-wide practices. Keeping your care coordinated locally reduces duplicate testing, prevents conflicting medications, and means that if your primary doctor adjusts a blood-pressure or diabetes medication, we can see how it affects your heart. If you do not yet have a primary care physician, we can still evaluate and manage your cardiac condition and help you connect with one.

Bring a current list of all your medications and supplements with doses, your insurance card and photo ID, and any recent test results or records — EKGs, echocardiograms, stress tests, or hospital discharge papers — especially if they were done at another Valley facility. It also helps to write down your symptoms (when they happen, what brings them on, how long they last) and your family history of heart disease or sudden death. If you monitor your blood pressure or heart rate at home, bring that log or your device. The more complete the picture, the more we can accomplish in one Tarzana visit, sometimes including same-day testing.

Yes. Heart failure means the heart cannot pump efficiently enough to meet the body's needs, causing shortness of breath, fatigue, and swelling in the legs and ankles; the 2022 AHA/ACC/HFSA heart-failure guideline emphasizes early diagnosis, guideline-directed medications, and close monitoring to keep patients stable and out of the hospital. Valve disease — a murmur, aortic stenosis, or a leaking mitral valve — is common as patients age and is graded with echocardiography. We measure how well your heart pumps, track your symptoms and weight, adjust medications, and, when a valve problem reaches the threshold for repair or replacement (including TAVR), we time and coordinate that referral rather than waiting for a crisis.

When a Tarzana patient needs hospital-level care — admission, a cardiac catheterization, or a procedure that cannot be done in the office — we coordinate with Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center at 18321 Clark St, the acute-care hospital nearest our office, as well as other San Fernando Valley hospitals depending on your plan and needs. The advantage of managing your care locally is continuity: your CACVI cardiologist knows your history, so a hospital stay or procedure is planned around a record we already hold rather than starting from scratch. We handle the referrals and share your imaging and notes directly with the treating team, then resume your outpatient management afterward.