Sunday, November 17, 2019

How to Treat Heart Disease


Surely the study is noteworthy. It addresses an issue I know nothing about, so I will simply report the findings. The issue is the use of stents and bypass surgery to treat heart disease. While the study does not dispute the fact that patients who are suffering acute symptoms do well to receive surgical treatment, other patients do as well in the long run by taking medication and by improving their health habits.

The Wall Street Journal reports on the study.

Stents and coronary artery bypass surgery are no more effective than intensive drug treatment and better health habits in preventing millions of Americans from heart attacks and death, a large study found, shedding new light on a major controversy in cardiology.

Researchers and doctors have fiercely debated for years how best to treat people who have narrowed coronary arteries but aren’t suffering acute symptoms.

The standard treatment has been to implant stents—wire mesh tubes that open up clogged arteries—or to perform bypass surgery, redirecting blood around a blockage. Those procedures are performed even though these patients either have no symptoms or feel chest pain only when they climb a few flights of stairs or exert themselves in some other way.

The study is the largest and among the most rigorous research yet to suggest that while stents and bypass surgery can be lifesaving for people who are having heart attacks, they aren’t necessarily better than cholesterol-lowering drugs and other changes in health habits for most people with chronic, or stable, coronary artery disease, which affects about 9.4 million Americans.

“You won’t prolong life,” said Judith Hochman, chair of the study and senior associate dean for clinical sciences at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

But stents or bypass surgery work better than medicine and lifestyle changes alone in relieving symptoms for people who have frequent angina, or chest pain, the researchers found.

4 comments:

  1. Barbells, Krav Maga, and a meat-based diet with fresh, low-carb vegetables and just enough complex carbs to push through a workout. Vigorous swimming is an excellent add-on. Targeted fasting is smart—and it trains the body not to go nuts when it doesn’t have food every 3 hours. We are apex predators, eat accordingly. Stop running and start strategizing. Look to the Eskimo. Whatever you do, cut out the sugar and the processed foods.

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8439204/

    The science was political and personal from the git-go. We do nothing to address why the demand for health care is out of control only what to do about how to pay for more of it because we just get weaker and fatter each year.

    BTW, think about what a meat-based diet represents to leftists. They hate everything about it. They will fight against it with everything they have. The leftist vision: cities filled with timid, gay sheep eating plants and drinking tea.


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  2. The Democrats are CLEARLY the disloyal opposition, and I am happy with Trump's appropriate treatment of them.

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  3. This is no surprise since medical treatent to lower cholesterol has become very effective. Also, fatal heart attacks are often caused by non-abstructing plaque which ruptures suddenly.

    I am curious about what the lifestyle changes they suggest might be. Could it be to eat less cholesterol and avoid saturated fats? Those are the very things that some people are trying to discredit.

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  4. Being happy prevents heart attacks. The question is what is good and what makes you happy?

    Conan?

    https://binged.it/2KyW4Er

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