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

I am a bit disappointed at the amount of cardiac patients that do not take advantage of the cardiac rehabilitation programs that are offered.  I know that we are all busy and want to “get back to life” as quick as possible but there is overwhelming evidence that suggests how beneficial a rehab program can be for cardiac patients. Who is the biggest culprit…
Lead author Dr. Jose A. Suaya, of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., found that women participated less in cardiac rehabilitation than did men, older people less than younger people and non-whites significantly less than whites.
Cardiac rehabilitation …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

Twice as many women as men ages 45 to 64 have undetected or “silent” myocardial infarctions, suggesting a general diagnosis problem; however, Warwick University Medical School researchers say doctor’s gender may hinder early diagnosis of heart disease in women.
This is sort of interesting. The doctors gender affects the diagnosis of heart disease. And which sex had the “quicker hand” to diagnosing coronary disease? If you guessed the female physicians then you are correct, but only towards males. The female doctors showed a clear bias in favor of male patients when considering age as a diagnostic factor, …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

Human embryonic cells has helped rebuild heart tissue in rats. Yes, the research was on rats but promising and welcomed none the less. Here is what the group of US researchers had to report…
Implanting human embryonic stem cells in rats four days after they had heart attacks repaired heart muscles and improved heart function, researchers from the University of Washington and the biotechnology company Geron report in an article appearing Monday in the journal Nature Biotechnology.
Previous attempts to “heal” with stem cells in a cardiac fashion have failed secondary to the limited success of deriving heart cells from …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