Tag Archive for 'heart attacks'

Studies reveal that smoking bans have improved health

Published
by
Jana
on September 23, 2009
in Health and Wellness
. 0 Comments

Bans on smoking in public places has not just cleared the air, it has led to major drops in heart attacks.

There were two teams of researchers who came to this conclusion after they looked at evidence from over a dozen areas in the U.S. Canada, and Europe that had begun smoking restrictions.

According to the researchers, the decline in heart attacks was almost right away, and they even increased the longer the bans were held in place. One study found that after smoking bans began, heart attack rates went down an average of 26 percent in a year. After 3 years, heart attack rates declined an average of 36 percent.

David Meyers, from the University of Kansas Medical Center and lead author of one of the studies, said that he is sure of the benefit from the bans and that “the effect of smoke on heart attacks is huge.” He made a conservative estimate that a public smoking ban for the whole U.S. might prevent around 156,400 heart attacks a year. He also said that he was embarrassed that America has not passed a national smoking ban even though Scotland, Ireland, Italy and France already have one in place. His study is in the latest issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

North Carolina, which is the nation’s biggest tobacco-producing state,  joined around 30 other states this year in prohibiting smoking in restaurants and bars. In January the N.C. law will take effect and it authorizes fines of up to $50 for anyone who smokes after being asked to stop. A $200 fine will be issued for managers of establishments who don’t enforce the new law after being warned twice.

Recently published in Circulation, the American Heart Associatio’s journal, is a study from researchers at the University of California, San Francisco. They looked at a lot of related data and came to similar conclusions as the study mentioned earlier.

Also, a new federal ban on flavored cigarettes took effect on September 22. This is one of the first signals that the FDA is practicing new authority to regulate tobacco. The ban is on manufacturing, importing, marketing and distribution of candy, fruit or clove-flavored cigarettes. Health authorities say that these types of cigarettes are more popular with young people. Dr. Lawrence Deyton, director of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, said that studies show that 17-year-old smokers are three times more likely to use flavored cigarettes than smokers who are older than 25.

The ban is expected to help stop more than 3,600 youth from smoking because FDA officials said that around 90 percent of adult smokers begin smoking as teenagers. A letter was sent to the industry last week that discusses the ban.

Plavix with aspirin may help prevent strokes and heart attacks

Published
by
Jana
on May 4, 2009
in Health and Wellness
. 0 Comments

Aspirin, along with the blood thinner Plavix, helped people with a common heartbeat abnormality from getting a stroke and heart attack. Doctors claim that having this abnormality raises their risk for these problems.

This specific treatment is for a rhythm disorder, called atrial fibrillation, that 2.2 million Americans suffer from. It happens when the upper parts of the heart flutter instead of beating normally. This causes blood to pool and form clots that can make their way to the brain, resulting in a stroke.

The blood thinner warfarin, sold as Coumadin and in generic form, is the normal treatment for this condition. Unfortunately, zeroing in on the right dose tends to be tricky – too little and a stroke could result and too much could cause life-threatening bleeding. Patients using the drug have to go to the doctor often for blood tests to monitor their dosage.

Because of these complications, almost half of patients take aspirin instead of warfarin, even though aspirin is way less effective at preventing strokes. 

Dr. Stuart Connolly of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, was in charge of a study that tested whether adding clopidogrel, sold as Plavix by French-based Sanofi-Aventis SA, could be effective. There were 7,554 U.S. patients and 32 other countries who either were not able to or chose not to take the drug warfarin; also half were given Plavix.

At the end of four years of observance, the dual drug treatment lowered the number of these combined conditions – heart attacks, heart-related deaths, strokes and blood clots – by 11 percent. There were 924 of these problems in patients who took only aspirin versus only 832 patients who also took Plavix. Despite that, the combination treatment did raise the risk for serious bleeding – 251 cases against 162 who took only aspirin.

Dr. Connolly said that patients on the combination still fared better. In three years, for every 1,000 patients treated, the combination prevented 28 strokes and six heart attacks and resulted in 20 bleeding cases.

Results were given March 31 at an American College of Cardiology conference and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Study reveals many women get inadequate care for heart attacks

Published
by
Jana
on December 31, 2008
in Health and Wellness
. 0 Comments

A recent study of U.S. hospitals found that women receiving hospital care because of heart attacks often are not provided with the proper treatment, and their chances of dying are higher than men if they experience a massive heart attack.

On the whole, women endure heart attacks about the same as men while under a hospital’s care, but the study revealed that there is a difference in treatment of gender when women experience the most severe type of heart attack. It was found that women receive less of the required medicines and procedures than men, and or it takes a longer period of time to acquire them.

To get this data, 420 hospitals were enrolled in an American Heart Association program. This program objective was to push doctors to observe guidelines for treating patients who have suffered from heart attacks. Past research has indicated that women’s heart attacks were cared for in a less aggressive fashion.

The heart association funded the new research and the results were reported in the group’s medical journal, Circulation, on Monday, December 8, 2008.

A cardiologist who specializes in women’s care, Dr. Nieca Goldberg, said that the study shows that women’s heart attack symptoms are often not being taken seriously.She also adds that women usually don’t have the typical symptoms such as chest pains. They often have pain in their lower bodies or extreme shortness of breath.

In the study, the treatment of 78,254 heart attack victims was observed to check if guidelines were followed and take into account how many of these patients died. The heart association’s”Get with the Guidelines” program require hospitals in the program to log this kind of information in a registry.

Concerning heart attacks overall, approximately the same amount of men and women died in the hospital, but when the most serious kind of heart attacks are taken into consideration, there is a significant difference.

These severe type of heart attacks are caused by a complete blockage of an artery, which keeps oxygen and blood from getting to the heart muscle and causes part of it to die. An electrocardiogram, a machine that finds distinctive changes, is used to do the diagnosis. Prompt action is required to open the artery to get the blood flowing again. This is done either with a clot-dissolving drug or an angioplasty.

In the study, about one-third of the heart attacks were severe. The rough numbers revealed that 10 percent of the women with massive heart attacks died in the hospital. About 6 percent were men. Once the women’s older ages and other differences were considered, the researchers came to the conclusion that the women  in the study were 12 percent more likely than men to die of a severe heart attack while in the hospital. The researchers also revealed that women were not as likely as men to receive necessary medicines, such as an aspirin, within 24 hours, and they were less likely to receive treatment to restore blood flow, or it wasn’t provided quickly enough.

An important point was brought up by Dr. Laura Wexler, a researcher from the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. She said that heart disease is usually thought of as a man’s disease, even though it is the leading cause of death in women.