When a heart attack comes, you feel as though a lightning bolt had struck the ground beside you. Sharp pain crashes through your chest. It can also sizzle up your arm, your back, your neck. And the pain doesn’t let up.
Over 1.5 million Americans will suffer a heart attack each year. And 550,000 of them will die. But advances in surgical techniques and drugs in the last decade now give you the best chances in 50 years of surviving an attack. This means that people who have had heart attacks are living longer and without pain. Increasingly, they are winning the war against heart disease.
Leslie Schield, 56, is a heart attack victim who became a victor.
“I woke up with pressure in the center of my breastbone,” says Mr. Schield, a plumbing superintendent in Houston. “And I had a pain in my right shoulder. I thought it was heartburn.”
Four hours later, Mr. Schield lay on an operating table at Herman Hospital of the University of Texas Medical School. X rays showed that a blood clot was blocking a coronary artery. This blood vessel, no thicker than a soda straw, carries blood and oxygen to the heart. Without enough oxygen, Mr. Schield’s heart screamed in pain.
The medical team had to act fast. Drs. Richard Smalling and Lance Gould and their associates slipped a long hollow tube – called a catheter – through an artery in Mr. Schield’s groin up to his heart. Guided by X-ray pictures of the patient’s heart that were projected onto a television screen, the doctors jiggled the catheter so that it rested at the face of the blood clot. Then they squirted the clot with a drug called streptokinase and actually watched the drug dissolve the blockage. Within an hour, the artery channel was clear. Life-sustaining blood flowed freely once more.
“I saw the whole thing on television while it was happening,” says Mr. Schield, “and except for a hot flash when the drug went in, I got relief right away.”
New drugs can save lives after a heart attack, but doctors must act fast. In the 1970s, Mr. Schield (and any other patient with a similar condition) would have either died or been crippled for life by a weak and painful heart.
Streptokinase is only one answer, though an important one, to heart disease. Doctors also can insert small but powerful pumps into the heart’s main artery, the aorta. The pump can help a weakened heart muscle circulate blood. Surgeons also open up clogged coronary arteries or bypass them with sophisticated plumbing jobs.
A drug that fights organ rejection has made heart transplants viable for far more patients. Other drugs calm irritable hearts and reduce high blood pressure, one of the heart’s most powerful enemies. And researchers are seeking and finding new clues to help you prevent heart attack.
Patients with irregular, irritable hearts that could stop at any moment are candidates for pacemakers. This year, surgeons will implant these tiny (each is smaller than the powder puff in a woman’s compact) battery-powered boxes into the chests of 200,000 Americans. Via electric wires, the pacemakers deliver weak shocks to the heart to keep it beating in rhythm.
*5/266/5*
SCIENCE SAVING YOUR HEARTWhen a heart attack comes, you feel as though a lightning bolt had struck the ground beside you. Sharp pain crashes through your chest. It can also sizzle up your arm, your back, your neck. And the pain doesn’t let up.Over 1.5 million Americans will suffer a heart attack each year. And 550,000 of them will die. But advances in surgical techniques and drugs in the last decade now give you the best chances in 50 years of surviving an attack. This means that people who have had heart attacks are living longer and without pain. Increasingly, they are winning the war against heart disease.Leslie Schield, 56, is a heart attack victim who became a victor.”I woke up with pressure in the center of my breastbone,” says Mr. Schield, a plumbing superintendent in Houston. “And I had a pain in my right shoulder. I thought it was heartburn.”Four hours later, Mr. Schield lay on an operating table at Herman Hospital of the University of Texas Medical School. X rays showed that a blood clot was blocking a coronary artery. This blood vessel, no thicker than a soda straw, carries blood and oxygen to the heart. Without enough oxygen, Mr. Schield’s heart screamed in pain.The medical team had to act fast. Drs. Richard Smalling and Lance Gould and their associates slipped a long hollow tube – called a catheter – through an artery in Mr. Schield’s groin up to his heart. Guided by X-ray pictures of the patient’s heart that were projected onto a television screen, the doctors jiggled the catheter so that it rested at the face of the blood clot. Then they squirted the clot with a drug called streptokinase and actually watched the drug dissolve the blockage. Within an hour, the artery channel was clear. Life-sustaining blood flowed freely once more.”I saw the whole thing on television while it was happening,” says Mr. Schield, “and except for a hot flash when the drug went in, I got relief right away.”New drugs can save lives after a heart attack, but doctors must act fast. In the 1970s, Mr. Schield (and any other patient with a similar condition) would have either died or been crippled for life by a weak and painful heart.Streptokinase is only one answer, though an important one, to heart disease. Doctors also can insert small but powerful pumps into the heart’s main artery, the aorta. The pump can help a weakened heart muscle circulate blood. Surgeons also open up clogged coronary arteries or bypass them with sophisticated plumbing jobs.A drug that fights organ rejection has made heart transplants viable for far more patients. Other drugs calm irritable hearts and reduce high blood pressure, one of the heart’s most powerful enemies. And researchers are seeking and finding new clues to help you prevent heart attack.Patients with irregular, irritable hearts that could stop at any moment are candidates for pacemakers. This year, surgeons will implant these tiny (each is smaller than the powder puff in a woman’s compact) battery-powered boxes into the chests of 200,000 Americans. Via electric wires, the pacemakers deliver weak shocks to the heart to keep it beating in rhythm.*5/266/5*
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This entry was posted Sunday, February 13th, 2011 at 1:15 pm and is filed under Cardio & Blood-Cholesterol.
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