Dr. John's Health Matters
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Posts tagged "angioplasty"
Monday, Aug 31st, 2009 ↓Exercise beats angioplasty: heart experts →
Aug 31, 2009 (Cbc.ca)—Working up a sweat may be even better than angioplasty for some heart patients, experts say.
Studies have shown heart patients benefit from exercise, and some have shown it works better than surgical procedures. At a meeting of the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona on Sunday, several experts said doctors should focus more on persuading their patients to exercise rather than simply doing angioplasties.
Angioplasty is the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalized with worsening symptoms. It involves using a tiny balloon to flatten a blockage and propping the heart artery open with a mesh tube called a stent. Most angioplasties are done on a non-emergency basis, to relieve chest pain caused by clogged arteries cutting off the heart’s blood supply.
“It’s difficult to convince people to exercise instead of having an angioplasty, but it works,” said Rainer Hambrecht of Klinikum Links der Weser in Bremen, Germany.
Hambrecht published a study in 2004 that found that nearly 90 per cent of heart patients who rode bikes regularly were free of heart problems one year after they started their exercise regimen. Among patients who had an angioplasty instead, only 70 per cent were problem-free after a year.
For full article, see link above.
Tags: exercise heart attack angioplasty cardiovascular physical activity surgery artery chest pain clogged blood flow prevention
New Evidence: Exercise Helps Heart Disease, Increases Survival Better than Angioplasty →
July 11, 2009 (NaturalNews.com)— At the European Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation meeting recently held in Barcelona, Spain, new heart research was presented that shows one treatment in particular can provide remarkable help for patients with certain forms of serious heart disease. It’s not a new drug or surgical procedure. Instead, it’s a natural therapy — plain old-fashioned regular exercise.
In fact, in several studies just presented at the meeting, exercise reduced the markers of heart disease in patients following coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG). What’s more, it improved indications of disease in people with heart failure, a condition usually thought to be incurable and often just treated with symptom-relieving drugs. But the news that’s perhaps most likely to make some interventional cardiologists’ hearts skip a beat or two was the evidence presented that showed that exercise improved cardiac event-free survival in coronary patients better than angioplasty with stents.
For full article see link above.
Tags: heart cardiovasular exercise rehabilitation disease bypass surgery failure coronary angioplasty PCI plaque prevention
Angioplasty useless for most heart attack patients, study finds
by Jessica Fraser
(NewsTarget) nov 15 2006 - Patients who undergo artery-opening angioplasties only benefit from the procedure if it is performed immediately after a heart attack, according to a new international study by researchers from the New York University School of Medicine.
Angioplasties are routinely performed on heart attack patients days and even weeks following a heart attack, and involve inserting a tiny balloon into a blocked artery and inflating it to clear blockages. However, the researchers’ study found that waiting to perform an angioplasty could actually harm heart attack patients by possibly increasing their chances of a second attack or heart failure.
The researchers, led by Judith Hochman of the NYU School of Medicine, examined nearly 2,200 patients from 27 countries who received treatment for heart attack. The patients were treated three to 28 days following their attack, and some received angioplasties while others received only drug treatments.
Hochman and colleagues found that the patients who received angioplasties experienced no significant benefits compared to patients who received drug treatment only. The researchers examined the patients’ chances of having a second heart attack or heart failure, as well as death rates, and found that those who underwent angioplasty surgery were more likely to have another heart attack.
The researchers — whose study was published in the online edition of the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at a recent meeting of the American Heart Association in Chicago — believe that the act of reopening a large clogged artery during an angioplasty could cause smaller vessels to close, rendering them unavailable if the larger artery becomes blocked again.
“These results challenge the long-standing belief that opening a blocked artery is always good,” said Elizabeth G. Nabel of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which provided funding for the study. “Instead, the study suggests that late angioplasty is unnecessary in this circumstance.”
