Novant Health adds first electrophysiologist to Hilton Head Island team

HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (WTOC) - Novant Health is expanding its heart and vascular care by adding its first South Carolina-based electrophysiologist to the team.

Dr. Mark Liwanag is a clinical cardiac electrophysiologist who specializes in repairing irregular heartbeats. Novant Health is working to close the gap in heart health on Hilton Head Island.

“In truth, yeah, the island’s been vastly undertreated for this arrhythmia. And again, it’s, it’s out there. People have been having atrial fibrillation and it kind of goes, it definitely goes undertreated,” Liwanag said.

Liwanag is able to perform safer, shorter and more precise heart procedures correcting heart arrhythmias, something very common in older patients.

“And they used to take eight, nine, 10 hours. And not only that, with the types of ways that they were doing it, they were not as safe as what we’re doing now,” Liwanag said.

He said the biggest risk factor for having the arrhythmia is age.

“Your biggest risk factor for having this arrhythmia is that you took too good a care of yourself. You continued living. You’re on this side of the dirt. This is kind of what happened. This is kind of how it goes,” Liwanag said.

Angela Keziah, a nurse on the team, said the hospital is treating more patients locally.

“We’re doing a lot more patients that we used to have to send out to different facilities that now we’re able to do here,” Keziah said.

The heart and vascular team said the new technology and surgeries Liwanag is able to perform were long overdue for the community but are already making a difference in patients’ outcomes.