Heart disease of the left main coronary artery has been found to be an inherited condition. Families tend to “share” this form of heart disease.
“In our study we focused on the coronary disease pattern underlying coronary artery disease and found that, for left main coronary artery disease, 49 percent of the phenotypic variation that is due to genetic effects was inherited. This substantial heritability is even higher than that for coronary artery disease or myocardial infarction in general.”
Why is this important? It can provide for more intensive screening and treatment strategies for patients that have known heart disease …read more

Hmm… I will present this to you with no opinion or comments from me. It seems that researchers out of The Bristol Heart Institute in Britain have confirmed the belief that certain patients that have survived heart attacks and heart disease become more naturally pre-conditioned than their healthy counterparts.
… Discovered surprising responses of the heart to mock cardiac surgery in a mouse model. When the heart was stopped and restarted — mimicking the conditions used in most heart bypass surgery — scientists found hearts with coronary disease from genetically modified mice were more resistant to damage than hearts without …read more

Get your child’s cholesterol checked! That is what they are suggesting now. Researchers are urging parents to have their children’s cholesterol checked as early as 15 months.
Researchers at Barts and the London Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry found that screening was most effective if done between the ages of 1 and 9. They said the screening at this age detected 88 percent of affected individuals.
Once an “affected” child is identified, the parents would then be screened. This could ultimately help in the medical prevention and treatment of the child and the adult. Killing 2 …read more

Come on ladies, don’t let me down! I am so disappointed by the following research findings…
Researchers at University of Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas found that women with a family history of heart disease were less likely than men to change habits such as smoking and infrequent physical activity. In fact, they were more likely to engage in lifestyle choices that increase their risk of heart disease than are women who didn’t report a history of heart disease.
Seriously speaking, we need to be smarter than that. If you know what a risk factor is, which I know most …read more

A Heart failure pump has been developed to assist those patients awaiting their gift of life. I really do hope that this is a success.
The pump is implanted into the patient’s body and pumps blood from the weakened left ventricle to the rest of the body at the same rate as a healthy heart. In addition to helping 75 percent of patients stay alive for at least six months, or until a donor heart becomes available, the device assists patients’ original hearts regain function, thereby allowing other organs to heal by restoring blood flow.
The device is about the size …read more

A new type of treatment for cardiac fibrosis is on the horizon. Fibrosis occurs when an excess amount of matrix proteins, like collagen, develops and leaves pathological scarring. The heart becomes “stiff”. With inflexibility, the heart can not work properly, ie. it can not flex and relax.
Cardiac disease is the leading cause of death in the “Western world”. And with heart disease being so prevalent, too many patients deal with cardiac fibrosis on a daily basis.
The National Institutes of Health and the Novartis Corp. have funded an animal study that may lead to a possible treatment…
The …read more

Have you ever heard someone say, “well they are 80 years old, what do you expect”? Answer please… I expect all patients to be privy to treatment regardless of age. So, if my grandmother is 82, but has no health history, and is wild and lively, then treat her condition. True, some older patients with multi system failure and years of battling hospitalizations need to understand the words, “enough is enough”, but that is certainly not the case for all!
New research has been done to study how aggressive physicians should be with cholesterol lowering drugs among their elder …read more