Fall marks the start of school athletic programs and recreational sports leagues. You may occasionally have heard on the news about a student’s suffering a heart attack or passing out during athletic activity. Fortunately, this is a rare occurrence. Most important is to know that many times, these events can be prevented. (more…)
“Faster care hasn’t cut heart attack deaths in hospitals.”
A USA Today article noted “The Medicare metric for timely heart attack treatment is … “door-to-balloon” time — the time between when a heart attack patient arrives in the ER and when the balloon angiography begins — researchers found that the percentage of heart attack patients who die while in the hospital, about 5%, hasn’t changed.”
“Irreversible damage from a heart attack can begin in 30 minutes. Most tissue death occurs in the first two to three hours…” “A new study suggests that speeding up hospital care isn’t enough to save lives … A better predictor of survival might be ‘symptom to balloon time’…”
Chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes, are responsible for seven out of every 10 deaths among Americans each year, and many of the risk factors that contribute to the development of these diseases are preventable. Healthy People 2020, an initiative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), aims to improve the health of all Americans by providing science-based, 10-year national objectives. (more…)
A recent article in the financial press (Bloomberg) drew wide attention to inappropriate and excessive use of stents in patients with coronary artery disease (disease in the vessels that supply blood to the heart). Stents are tiny mesh tubes placed in a diseased coronary artery to “prop” it open after a narrowed segment of it has been expanded by a balloon. (more…)
Here is the bad news: Heart disease kills more women than do all cancers combined, yet many women still cite breast cancer as their chief health concern. Young women, especially, do not think heart disease is a threat. But, since 1984, more women than men die each year from heart disease. Although death from heart attack has declined in both men and women over the last 30 years, the decrease has been more pronounced in males than females. Depression after a heart attack is twice as likely to occur in women than men, and depression increases the chance of a second heart attack. (more…)