Dr. Deepali Tukaye gets to the heart of the matter.
Conway Regional Medical Center’s newest interventional cardiologist said people can make lifestyle changes to improve their cardiovascular health, and she is passionate about getting the word out.
February is American Heart Month, and Tukaye has been making the rounds to educate people — especially women — on the facts.
“Women generally think of heart disease as a man’s disease; that’s not true. It’s the No. 1 killer in the world, and it’s the No. 1 killer of women in the United States.
“When men have heart attacks, one out of five die. When women have heart attacks, one out of four die,” she said, adding that 44 million women are living with heart disease.
Those are just the ones who know.
The 39-year-old Tukaye, who grew up in Bangalore, India, said she knew by age 11 or 12 that she wanted to be a doctor.
Why a doctor? “It appeared to be very gratifying,” she said, “and probably because biology was very easy for me in school.”
In India, students finish high school at age 15, she said, attend two years of college and start to medical school at 17 or 18.
Her family supported her career choice. Her mother, a homemaker, is “a very literary, cultural person” with an artistic bent, Tukaye said. “She was involved in supporting women,” and both her parents were involved in charitable causes in their community.
“My dad’s a freakin’ genius,” she said. “He’s a rocket scientist. He really is.”
She said he owns a nationally award-winning company that specializes in technology development for India.
“Growing up, my dad was my role model. My father came from abject poverty; his family didn’t have two square meals to eat a day. He made sure he got to school; he made sure he got to college,” she said.
Tukaye met her husband, Kiran Rajneesh, during their first year in medical school. He is a doctor of interventional pain management/neurology. On Monday, they will celebrate their 12-year wedding anniversary, albeit in different states.
He is director of the neurological pain division at The Ohio State University in Columbus. The plan is for him to come to Conway. “We’re working on it,” she said. “That will be nice.”
At age 22, right out of medical school in India, Tukaye had a fellowship in endocrinology and started building “a very good practice.”
“It was a very cool opportunity I had because I got to do a lot of clinical research” for companies such as Pfizer.
“I set up a practice that served the medically underserved population in a village. … It was one of the best times I had; I still dream about those days,” she said.
Her husband decided to pursue advanced training in the United States. She went to Johns Hopkins in Maryland, where she earned a doctorate in molecular and cellular physiology, and she also tutored medical students for four years.
“It opens up your world to a whole different perspective,” she said. “It helped me understand disease and pathology from a molecular aspect, and it helped me understand concepts better. Instead of just memorizing things in medicine, when I think of disease, I think of more what’s going wrong on a cellular level.” She said that helps her treat her patients, and “it helps me understand medicine a lot better than I did before.”
Tukaye had to decide what career path she wanted to follow after getting her doctorate.
“I said I’d rather go back to medicine because bottom line, this is my calling. I think taking care of patients is my calling,” Tukaye said. “I said if I’m going to have a nice practice, I might as well learn something new.”
Cardiology intrigued her because it’s a dynamic system that changes every second. It also was a challenge.
“When I was in medical school, I never even rotated through cardiology,” she said. “There was some sort of fear in my mind for cardiology, so I decided to face my fears there and get better at it.”
She completed a fellowship in interventional cardiology at Emory University in Atlanta and a fellowship in cardiovascular medicine from The Ohio State University. She also completed a residency in internal medicine at the University of Louisville in Kentucky.
Tukaye is in an elite group. She is one of few female cardiologists, which represent
12 percent of the specialty — and only 4 percent of interventional cardiologists are women.
“I think it’s a field that needs more women to join,” she said.
She has heard the reasoning — that’s it’s demanding for women, who might be trying to raise families at the same time. She doesn’t buy it.
“Yes, it is a tough job, and so is OB-GYN, and the majority of those are women,” she said.
Matt Troup, CEO of Conway Regional Health System, said the staff is thrilled to have Tukaye join the team.
“As we have assessed community need, we realize that heart and vascular care is and will continue to be a highly needed service. But the clinical specialty is but one component that makes Dr. Tukaye such an incredible fit for our hospital and community,” Troup said.
“She’s trained at some of the most highly regarded and well-known programs in the country. She’s not simply technically well-trained; she’s deeply passionate about patient education and awareness,” Troup said. “And to state the obvious — she has a unique perspective of being a female cardiologist. That doesn’t just fit strategically, that’s a unique need for so many of our patients and community.
“Women are the majority of our patients, and women’s heart disease is so often under-recognized and -treated. She fits our culture and promises to be bold, exceptional and called.”
Tukaye said she chose to come to Conway because she wanted to come to an underserved area.
“It’s been a very, very welcoming place. … People are very, very friendly. I love working with our staff. At Conway Regional, I think it’s a great place for comprehensive cardiovascular care,” she said. No matter what the cardiovascular issue, “we can provide what is needed 95 percent of the time in the same place.”
Last year was the 40th anniversary of interventional cardiology, and Tukaye said it’s amazing how far the specialty has come. Procedures that would have required open-heart surgery, such as replacing valves, are now being done through small holes in the groin or the wrist, and patients go home the next day.
During the interview, she apologized for having to take two phone calls, but they were important. She answered questions about medication for her patients, using a combination of her expertise and intuition. She suspected that one patient was doubling up on his medication at home because he did well when he was being overseen in the hospital.
“All my patients, one thing I do is quite a bit of prevention,” she said. “It’s never too late. Half the time, it is just being strong about what you want to do. You need to have a motivation for why you’re doing something. You need to find that one that giving up your current lifestyle is worth it — do you want to see your grandchild’s wedding?”
And heart disease starts early. “Blockages start building at age 10 that cause heart attacks,” Tukaye said.
She recommends exercise, of course, four or five times a week at “moderate intensity where at the end of the exercise, you’re sweating a little bit, out of breath, but you can talk.”
Tukaye said she does different kinds of exercise, but she uses her iPhone to track her goal of 10,000 steps a day.
It’s also important to regulate “anything you put in your mouth,” she said.
Cigarette smoking is out, and vaping is in her crosshairs, too.
“The latest data show there are risks,” she said.
“Marijuana has adverse cardiovascular outcomes when used on a regular basis,” Tukaye said. “It increases the risk of heart failure; it increases the risk of heart attack.”
Alcohol in moderation is the key, no more than one glass a day, she said.
She suggested goredforwomen.org for women to get more information.
Tukaye said the most satisfying part of her job is making a real difference in people’s lives.
“Just seeing the way people turn around, like if someone comes with crushing chest pain and thinks they’re going to die, and you put a stent in, and within the next 30 minutes they seem so much better,” she said, “and the next day, they’re walking down the corridor.
“To see that turnaround is pretty amazing.”
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.