Several groups have been working hard to get the word out to women that a woman’s heart attack symptoms may vary greatly from a man’s. However, a new Canadian study reveals something different.
According to the study presented at the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress 2009, there were no gender differences among the 305 angioplasty patients studied in rates of chest discomfort or other typical heart attack symptoms: arm discomfort, shortness of breath, sweating, nausea, indigestion-like symptoms and clammy skin. Angioplasty may briefly cause symptoms similar to a heart attack.

The study found that while men and women both may experience typical or non-typical …read more

A new method of measuring blood flow can help to boost the outcome of stents. The measuring of the blood flow can determine where stents need to be implanted.
Studies have shown that this new method is more effective than X-Ray examinations.
If you are considering having this procedure, your health care provider should be made aware of any problems.  Let them know if you have an allergy to shellfish or intravenous dye, have diabetes or kidney disease.
You will find more on this subject by clicking here Angioplasty.

Beautiful animated explanation courtsey MAYO CLINIC

The first studies carried out in humans that aim to lessen the muscle damage of a heart attack has yielded very favorable results. Very exciting! I think it is important for people to remember that ones heart suffers damage at 2 different points after a cardiac event- one when the ischemia from a blockage occurs and one when normal blood flow is resumed after an intervention.
The drug studied, KAI-9803, may prove to help in restoring muscle after damage the second time around post procedure, PCI.
“The goal of the treatment is to flood the heart damaged by the heart attack with …read more

So, I have a sticky kind of topic to share with you today…
A large study has found that black Medicare patients are less likely than white patients to receive blood vessel opening procedures such as angioplasty following a heart attack, whether they are admitted to hospitals that provide or do not provide these procedures, but also experience higher mortality rates at 1 year, according to a study in the June 13 issue of JAMA.
Why the difference?  Do you really think it is solely race related or are there other factors that play in to the decisions for interventions?
“These differences …read more

The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey study found a wireless system that enables on-call cardiologists to view full ECGs on “smart” phones can cut in half the time it takes to begin the treatment of heart attack with catheter-based techniques such as angioplasty and stenting.
The door to intervention time of patients having an acute MI was cut to 73 minutes using this wireless system. It used to take almost that long to just to notify the cardiologist of the patient’s positive MI.
I haven’t seen this used in clinical practice yet, but I sure do welcome …read more

If discontinuing anti-clotting medication after receiving a coated stent is a bad idea, wouldn’t it be better to get a stent that dissolves after a certain period of time? Some good reasons to get an absorbable stent:

You’d avoid having a foreign body inside your heart
The absorbable stent is more flexible and conforms to the shape of the coronary artery
A lower risk of late-stent thrombosis
Less potential scarring
Avoid the hassles a metal stent causes with CT and MRI scans

I’ve previously written about the Abbott XIENCE V Everolimus Eluting Coronary Stent System and today’s news is, I believe, …read more

An article in the New York Times discusses the higher than average rate of angioplasties in Elyria, Ohio which is mainly attributed to cardiologists at the local hospital.
Whether the preference for angioplasty is good for the patients of Elyria is open to medical debate. The cardiology group’s leader says the high rate of angioplasties is simply a function of his doctors’ detecting disease more often in their patients than physicians elsewhere might spot, and being quicker to intervene.
With heart disease being the number one killer in industrialized countries, cardiac healthcare easily earns doctors money which could be a motivating force …read more

This past week, FatBlogger told us about his mother who is back home after havin two stents* put in. He wrote a great post last week about heart disease in women.
Having a heart attack was a shock for my mom, as well as the rest of the family. To look at her, and her lifestyle, you would not think that she was a candidate. She is a healthy weight, probably under-weight if anything, active with the dog and gardening. However, she was a smoker and that contributed more than anything. Smoking shrinks the arteries and capillaries making it easier …read more