If you have a heart-zapping defibrillator implanted in your chest, you’re not supposed to compete in sports any more intense than bowling or golf. Lots of patients ignore those guidelines, trying everything from school basketball teams and community tennis leagues to running marathons and rock climbing — although no one knows if the life-saving implants work as well under that kind of stress.
Many of these athletes will now take part in a nationwide registry to see once and for all if this is a validated risk. Do the athletes need more “shocks” to the heart than other persons that would …read more

This made me sit up and take notice since I used to work nights in the hospital…
The graveyard shift is the worst time to call code blue, a new study finds. Patients who go into cardiac arrest while in the hospital are more likely to die if it happens after 11 p.m., when staffing may be lower or patients are watched less closely.
The ER is the only place that there was no difference in death rates. Among day shifts in all other units hospital wide the success rate of patients that cardiac arrested was 20% and the night shift …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

Top 10 Hearty Trivia Facts
1. Author of Frankenstein Mary Shelley kept her dead husband’s, poet Percy Shelley, heart wrapped in silk until she died. Imagine how that smelled!
2. You can purchase the largest model of a human heart for a small price of $5795.95 US dollars. Um huh, I said five thousand. It is 8 times the size of an anatomical heart at 100×90×70 cm. Wow, that is a lot of money!
3. The smallest person believed to ever have open heart surgery was just over 25 weeks gestation and about 1.4 lbs. This was back in 2002 and …read more

As we slide into fall and the skies get darker earlier, sweatshirts are on at the bus stop and the leaves are turning beautiful colors, I can’t help but think… winter will be here soon.
When you really stop and think about it, aren’t you more active in the summer months than the winter months? I think I am with the pool, walks in the evenings and running with the kids all day long. So this little tidbit of information shouldn’t come as a huge surprise.
A five-year study found people treated in the summer were on average 8% more likely to …read more

I was watching How to Look Good Naked- that Carsin Palmer show on Lifetime… Have you seen it? They take women that have low self esteem and have inner issues with themselves and work with them to believe in themselves and look good naked. I love it- it makes me look at myself different as well. I guess I can love the stretch marks that gave me 3 beautiful little girls!
Anyway- there was a thirty something year old women that had issues with herself due to scares from many heart operations. She was born with a very rare type of …read more

I was asked about this twice in the last week- As a nurse, do you see many procedures and types of treatments that question “ethics”- with elders? You know that whole quantity or quality? The thing is there is so much technology and advances in medications that we can keep a very sick heart going for a very long time. Is that to say that very same heart is effectively working without discomfort, compromising one’s lifestyle, hospitalizations and every day worries? No, not at all.
Researchers found that 16 percent of these patients reported refusing one or more medical or surgical …read more

Over 20% of all diabetics have heart disease. That is why it is so scary when new research and studies come out that prove diabetic medication to harm your heart. And here we go again… Two Wake Forest University School of Medicine faculty members sifted through three trials to come to the conclusion that certain diabetic medications could cause increased heart failure- ACCORD, ADVANCE, and the Veterans Affairs Diabetes study.
“We strongly recommend restrictions in the use of thiazolidinediones (the class of drugs) and question the rationale for leaving rosiglitazone on the market,” write Sonal Singh, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of …read more

A 92 year old Australian women is the first to undergo a ground breaking procedure. In the radical procedure, a new aortic valve is attached to a long rod and fed through a small incision in the groin up to the the heart, where it defrosts and expands. Wow!
This will take the place of open heart surgery for those that are too old and frail to undergo surgery. This will also help with cost and recovery time.

Researchers from Austria have studied studying carotid arteries with repeat US. Strange sentence but true.
The team first did ultrasound exams of the carotid arteries of 1,268 patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease because of multiple risk factors, such as smoking, diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or known blockages in other blood vessels such as the coronary arteries. Then they concentrated on the 574 patients that showed the most plaque buildup.
What did they find?