Heart Failure Hospital Admissions Continue to Rise
The number of Americans admitted to hospitals for heart failure has jumped in recent years, and the trend almost certainly will continue, says a report in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“Our study covers more than two decades, from 1979 to 2004, and the number of hospitalizations almost tripled during that time,” says Dr. Jing Fang, an epidemiologist with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
A major reason for the increase is the aging of the American population, says Dr. Fang. Heart failure, in which the heart progressively loses its ability to pump blood, is more common among older people.
“Another reason is the improvement in technology for treatment of patients with other heart diseases, such as acute myocardial infarction [heart attack],” adds Dr. Fang. “So, people with diseases of the heart live longer.”
Therapy Limited for a Declining Heart
The National Heart Discharge Survey shows that the number of admissions to hospitals with any mention of heart failure rose from over one million in 1979 to nearly four million in 2004, the report says.
More than 80 percent of those admitted to hospitals were 65 or older, with Medicare or Medicaid covering the cost.
The report did not cover the cost of the hospitalizations, but the American Heart Association has estimated it to be more than $20 billion annually, says Dr. Fang.
There has been a marked increase in the number of hospitalizations for which heart failure was not the primary cause.
Heart failure was listed as the primary cause in no more than 35 percent of cases, with respiratory diseases and other conditions given as the reason for hospital admission in all other cases.
“Most are due to pneumonia or another disease that makes heart failure worse,” says Dr. Fang.
Better control of those other conditions, which include diabetes and kidney disease, could reduce hospitalizations for heart failure.
But those people tend to keep coming back to the hospital because “you cannot cure people with heart failure,” explains Dr. Fang. “The best medicine [we] can do is to keep the heart functioning enough for the patient to have good quality of life.”
Hospital-Based Care Could Improve
A basic problem is that there is no effective treatment for heart failure severe enough to cause hospitalization, says Dr. Javed Butler, director of the heart failure research program at Emory University in Atlanta, and co-author of an accompanying editorial.
“When you are talking about medications that have been proven, they all are for chronic, stable outpatients,” explains Dr. Butler. “We don’t have any proven medications for treatment in the hospital.”
What is needed is a major effort to develop in-hospital treatments for severe heart failure, he says.
“When you consider the huge cost, it is right up high on the list of conditions we need to study,” says Dr. Butler. “It is a least-studied, most costly problem. We need to get a better grasp on what we should be doing.”
Always consult your physician for more information.
Online Resources
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Heart Failure Society of America
Add comment October 9, 2008
“Silent Strokes” Different than TIAs, Experts Say
If you are an older American with no major health problems, chances are about one in 10 that you have had a stroke and did not know it, according to a report in the medical journal Stroke.
It was probably not severe enough to cause recognizable symptoms, such as vision problems, facial weakness, or trouble walking, but it was still a blockage of a brain artery, and it reduced your thinking powers just a bit.
That estimate comes from a new study of 2,040 people, average age 62, in the long-running Framingham Offspring Study.
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed that 10.7 percent of them had experienced what study author Dr. Sudha Seshadri, at Boston University, calls “a silent brain infarct.”
It is the cerebral equivalent of what physicians call a myocardial infarct - blockage of a blood vessel that causes damage to heart tissue. In the case of a silent stroke, the blockage and the damage occurs in the brain, without symptoms.
TIA Has Symptoms, Silent Stroke May Not
A silent stroke is different from a transient ischemic attack (TIA), a momentary loss of brain function, says Dr. Seshadri. A TIA causes some symptoms, while a silent stroke, by definition, does not.
But both are warning signs to pay attention to the well-known risk factors for stroke, such as cholesterol levels, blood pressure, obesity, and smoking.
The incidence found in the Framingham Offspring study “was within the ballpark of what prior studies have suggested,” notes Dr. Seshadri.
“But this was a group of people who were younger than in most of the prior studies,” she says. “The fact that one in 10 persons had silent attacks that had subtle side effects on the brain is something we should be concerned about and should address.”
The effects of a silent brain infarct show up on an MRI scan as “small lesions in various parts of the brain,” says Dr. Seshadri. “We can’t tell from that whether they had a symptomatic attack.”
And the MRI scans give no clues as to when the silent stroke occurred.
Testing showed that “on average, compared to age-matched controls, those with lesions do have subtle signs, such as loss of flexibility of talk,” she says.
Address Risks Through Lifestyle Changes
The incidence seen in the study did not startle Dr. Claudette Brooks, at West Virginia University Health Sciences Center.
“When I look for the cause of headaches and similar problems, it doesn’t surprise me when I see these lesions, and other colleagues tell me they see them,” says Dr. Brooks.
An even higher rate of silent strokes might be expected in a study of African Americans, she notes.
“They have a higher incidence of hypertension [high blood pressure], atherosclerosis, and hyperlipidemia [excess blood fat],” says Dr. Brooks.
Nothing special needs to be done to reduce the risk of silent stroke, both physicians say.
“I wouldn’t recommend that people rush out to have an MRI,” says Dr. Seshadri. “It’s up to the medical and public health community to emphasize the importance of controlling risk factors.”
“The whole thing boils down to modifying risk factors,” explains Dr. Brooks. “If you don’t have risk factors such as high cholesterol, obesity, and diabetes, try to keep yourself out of the group that does. If you do, modify them by keeping blood pressure and cholesterol down, things like that.”
Always consult your physician for more information.
Online Resources
(Our Organization is not responsible for the content of Internet sites.)
National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
Stroke - Prevalence and Correlates of Silent Cerebral Infarcts in the Framingham Offspring Study
Add comment September 9, 2008
Some Fats Actually May Help the Heart
Fewer than half of Americans realize there are two types of dietary fat that actually help their hearts, a new survey shows.
So, while many have heeded the warnings about the cardiovascular dangers of trans fats and saturated fats, the American Heart Association (AHA) now thinks people need to pay more attention to the cardiovascular benefits conferred by polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats.
As a result of its recent survey, the AHA’s new Face the Fats campaign has harnessed the power of the Internet to encourage people to view these lesser known fats with new respect.
“We’re trying to take education to the next level and say when you have the opportunity to choose, choose the better fat, not the bad fat,” says Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, medical director of the Baylor Heart and Vascular Institute in Dallas and the incoming president of the AHA.
HDL Continues to “Sweep” the Bad Away
The campaign’s Web page presents information at varying levels of sophistication.
The pages include an interactive quiz on fats, menus, recipes, and a Fats 101 course. A Fats Translator calculates a body-mass index from the input of height, weight, age, and level of activity.
The index is a scale ranging from underweight to obesity.
The AHA decided to go digital in this phase of its campaign because “the Web really is becoming the world’s premier information source, so we have to be there,” adds Dr. Yancy.
“When we have lots of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats in our diet, our HDL cholesterol goes up and helps protect our arteries from clogging up and hardening,” explains Lona Sandon at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
“HDL kind of acts like a broom and sweeps up the artery-damaging molecules and takes them away,” she says.
Trans fats and saturated fats are more able to stick to blood vessel walls and harden arteries, adds Dr. Yancy.
This process can lead to the rupture of an artery or obstructed blood vessels that can cause heart attacks, strokes, or blood vessel disease.
Moderation on all Fats Advised
Sandon supports the idea of greater education on the different forms of dietary fat.
“I think it’s still very confusing for people,” she says. “They don’t know if they should be eating low fat, what kind of fat.”
She also advises moderation in consumption of any kind of fat. All fats have nine calories per gram, she explained, so even too much of the better fats can lead to weight gain. “They’re healthy, but you can’t go wild with them,” she says.
The Face the Fats campaign is funded by $7 million received from McDonalds USA as part of the settlement of a California class action lawsuit brought by a consumer advocacy group, bantransfat.com, according to the AHA.
McDonald’s recently announced that it has eliminated trans fats from its fried foods by changing to a canola-based cooking oil.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment August 19, 2008
Heart Disease in Men Linked to Teen Years
Normal developmental changes during the teenage years leave young adult men at higher risk of heart disease than their female counterparts, researchers report in the journal Circulation.
“Women’s protective advantage against heart disease starts young,” says lead author Dr. Antoinette Moran, at the University of Minnesota Children’s Hospital.
In adults, a set of factors increases the risk of heart disease.
These factors include high blood pressure, smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, abnormal cholesterol levels, and insulin resistance (a pre-diabetic condition in which the body cannot use insulin effectively).
Good Cholesterol Decreased in Males
To track the risk factors, researchers followed 507 Minneapolis school children from ages 11 to 19, when they had all reached sexual maturity. Fifty-seven percent of the children were male, 80 percent were Caucasian, and 20 percent were African American.
During the study, the researchers made 996 observations on the group, noting blood pressure, insulin sensitivity (opposite to insulin resistance), body mass index (BMI) and other body composition measures, blood glucose, and cholesterol measurements.
“We wanted to see which risks emerge first and how they relate to one another in normal, healthy school kids without diabetes or other major illnesses,” says Dr. Moran.
At age 11, boys and girls were similar in their body composition, lipid levels, and blood pressure, the researchers say.
Boys and girls became heavier during adolescence, increasing in body mass index and waist size. As expected during puberty, changes in body composition differed sharply between genders, with percentage of body fat decreasing in boys and increasing in girls.
During the study, changes in several cardiovascular risk factors or risk markers differed significantly between boys and girls:
- Triglycerides (a type of fat in the blood) increased in males and decreased in females.
- High-density lipoprotein (HDL or “good”) cholesterol decreased in males and increased in females.
- Systolic blood pressure (the first number in the blood pressure reading, measuring the pressure when the heart contracts) increased in both, but significantly more in the males.
- Insulin resistance, which had been lower in the boys at age 11, steadily increased until the young men at age 19 were more insulin resistant than the women.
Researchers found no gender difference in two other cardiovascular risk factors, total cholesterol, and low-density lipoprotein (LDL or “bad”) cholesterol.
“By age 19, the boys were at greater cardiovascular risk,” notes Dr. Moran. “This is particularly surprising because we usually think of body fat as associated with cardiovascular risk, and the increasing risk in boys happened at the time in normal development when they were gaining muscle mass and losing fat.”
Although girls gained cardiovascular protection when their proportion of body fat was increasing, excess fat is still a cause for concern.
“Obesity trumps all of the other factors and erases any gender-protective effect,” says Dr. Moran. “Obese boys and girls and men and women all have higher cardiovascular risk.”
Women’s Hormones May Offer Protection
The researchers say further studies are needed to better understand the development of cardiovascular protection during adolescence.
“That the protection associated with female gender starts young is fascinating and something that we don’t understand very well,” explains Dr. Moran.
“That this protection emerges during puberty and disappears after menopause suggests that sex hormones give women a protective advantage,” he says.
“There’s still a lot that needs to be sorted out in future studies - estrogen may be protective or testosterone may be harmful,” says Dr. Moran.
Dr. Moran says that this is normal physiology and not something that is influenced by lifestyle factors.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment July 1, 2008
Heart Failure a Concern for Non-Cardiac Surgeries
Older persons with heart failure face heightened odds of complications and death after non-cardiac surgeries, according to a study reported in the medical journal Anesthesiology.
“We’re trying to draw attention to this major problem,” says lead researcher Dr. Adrian F. Hernandez, at Duke University.
Heart failure, the progressive loss of the heart’s ability to pump blood, is widespread among older Americans, but it sometimes is overlooked as a risk factor when surgery is needed, he says.
“Most physicians focus on whether [older patients] have coronary artery disease or have a risk of heart attack,” says Dr. Hernandez. “Heart failure is by far a more important risk factor, but it doesn’t usually have greater weight when they want to identify patients at risk of complications or consider how they want to treat them after surgery.”
Symptoms of heart failure include shortness of breath, fatigue, and swelling of the legs.
Condition Has Impact on Surgery Success
Dr. Hernandez used Medicare data on more than 159,000 people undergoing major surgery not involving the heart, such as hip replacement operations. The study was the largest one ever conducted on this issue.
Past estimates have put the incidence of heart failure in the older population between 5 percent and 12 percent, but the new study found the condition in almost 20 percent of those having surgery.
The study divided the participants into three groups: those with heart failure, with or without coronary artery disease; those with only coronary artery disease; and those with neither condition.
Nearly 98 percent of all those who had surgery were discharged soon afterward from the hospital.
But 17.1 percent of those with heart failure had to be re-hospitalized within 30 days, compared to 10.8 percent of those with coronary artery disease and just 8.1 percent of those with neither ailment.
In the month after having surgery, 1.6 percent of those with heart failure died, compared to 0.5 percent for those with coronary artery disease and 0.3 percent of those with neither condition.
Steps can be taken to reduce the toll, notes Dr. Hernandez.
“The first thing is to check on what the conditions are that might influence the patients’ outcomes,” he says. “We have to identify therapies that lower the risk of a poor outcome and assure that all patients, when they have surgery, are carefully monitored.”
Close attention should be paid to be sure that symptoms of heart failure are kept to a minimum, adds Dr. Hernandez. Medications such as beta blockers and diuretics can be used to keep heart failure under control.
But he notes that it is not certain how effective such measures might be in reducing risks - only a rigorous, controlled study could answer that question definitively.
Steps Can Be Taken to Reduce Risks
Dr. Robert Hobbs, a cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, says the increase in surgery risk due to heart failure has been noted before, but “this is a big study that involves a lot of people. It solidifies that the risk is real, and the risk is substantial.”
Measures that can be taken to reduce the risk include simply not performing surgery, if possible, on someone whose life might be endangered, says Dr. Hobbs.
“If surgery is necessary for someone with heart failure, there should be targeted use of heart failure medications before the operation and an effort to avoid overloading the body with intravenous fluid during the procedure,” he says.
“And we would certainly watch them more carefully in the postoperative period,” adds Dr. Hobbs.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment June 1, 2008
Triglycerides Linked to Risk for Heart Disease
High levels of triglycerides are strong predictors of cardiac trouble and this strengthens the case for including measurement of the blood fats in prevention programs, says a study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
“Triglycerides traditionally have been viewed as second-class citizens,” says lead author Dr. Michael Miller, at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
“LDL cholesterol has always taken center stage,” says Dr. Miller. “We know that LDL is intimately involved in bringing cholesterol to scavenger cells, which deposit them to form plaques in the arteries.
“This study shows that triglycerides in and of themselves are also lipids to blame,” notes Dr. Miller.
Under 150 on Triglycerides is Best
The original study was designed to test the effectiveness of two LDL-lowering statins called Pravachol® and Lipitor® in reducing recurring coronary disease after a heart attack.
The new study went over the data on the 4,162 participants in the trial, looking at the association between triglyceride levels and the incidence of heart problems and death.
“The patients who had heart attacks came back after 30 days,” says Dr. Miller. “We measured LDL levels and triglyceride levels and followed them over the next two years, evaluating for the occurrence of new events and death. If a patient had triglyceride levels below 150 [milligrams per deciliter], there was a 27 percent lower risk of having a new event over time,” he says.
“After multiple adjustments for such things as age, diabetes, high blood pressure, and obesity, the risk reduction was 20 percent,” Dr. Miller explains.
Unlike LDL cholesterol, for which there is a recommended blood level of 70 or below, there is no recommended blood triglyceride level but 150 milligrams per deciliter or below is “considered as desirable,” says Dr. Miller.
When the participants were divided into four groups on the basis of both LDL and triglyceride levels, those in the group with under 150 for triglycerides and under 70 for LDL did the best.
They had a 28 percent lower risk than those in the group with the highest readings for both LDL and triglycerides, he says.
“At the present time, we don’t have a recommendation for triglyceride lowering, so the next logical step is a study to determine whether lowering triglycerides and LDL reduces risk more than lowering LDL alone,” he says. Two such studies are in progress, he notes.
Mediterranean Diet a Good Approach
Previous research has already pointed toward such a connection: A study that appeared in the medical journal Neurology last December found a link between triglycerides and stroke risk.
And research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) last July showed that when high triglyceride levels showed up in nonfasting cholesterol tests, there was an increased risk for a future heart attack.
Dr. Leslie Cho of the Women’s Cardiovascular Center at the Cleveland Clinic, notes that the new report “is not a huge surprise.”
She says, “The unique thing about this study is that even if you control bad LDL cholesterol to less than 70, you still need to look at triglycerides.”
The problem with triglycerides is that “they are the most unstable fats in the body,” so that at least two readings are needed to get an accurate measure of blood levels, she explains.
Dr. Miller says, “I am proactive about both LDL cholesterol and triglycerides.”
Several measures can be taken to lower triglyceride levels - many of them are already recommended on general principles for reduction of coronary risk.
One is to eat a Mediterranean diet, rich in fish. Omega-3 fatty acids can lower triglyceride levels, as can niacin, and exercise has a beneficial effect, says Dr. Miller. Statins also have some triglyceride-lowering effect, he notes.
“If you can effectively get both LDL cholesterol and triglycerides down, you are going to do better,” says Dr. Miller.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment April 26, 2008
Surgery Tops Stents for Multiple Heart Blockages
Bypass surgery provides a lower risk of death and heart attacks than do stents for people with blockages of at least two heart arteries, says a report in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM).
The finding is far from the last word on the stent-versus-surgery debate in such cases, says study author Dr. Edward L. Hannan, at the State University of New York at Albany.“But there isn’t any other study right now that is better than this,” he says. “Physicians need to inform patients about these results and need to engage in a dialogue that includes these findings to determine what is the proper treatment for multi-vessel disease.”
Further Studies Will Define State-of-the-Art
Dr. Hannan studied the outcomes of more than 17,400 procedures for people with multiple blocked coronary arteries.
The outcomes were consistently better in an 18-month follow-up for bypass surgery than for the artery-opening procedure called angioplasty followed by insertion of a drug-coated tube known as a stent.
For example, 92.1 percent of those who had surgery for three blocked arteries had no heart attacks and were alive, compared to 89.7 percent of those who got stents.
For those with two blocked arteries, the comparable numbers were 94.5 percent for surgery and 92.5 for stent implants.
The study was not a randomized, controlled trial, which is regarded as the gold standard for medical research.
It was observational, meaning that the researchers simply recorded what happened in medical practice rather than trying to control all the factors involved in choosing a treatment.
“But the randomized trials done in the past have not necessarily been better,” explains Dr. Hannan. “They were restricted to patients who were not very sick, and they also did not recognize that when you compare two treatments, some patients might not prefer the one that is more invasive.”
Surgery is more invasive than angioplasty, since it requires the chest to be cut open. Angioplasty is done by threading a flexible tube called a catheter through a blood vessel into the heart.
One shortcoming of the study is the relatively short follow-up period of 18 months, says Dr. Joseph P. Carrozza, at Harvard Medical School, who wrote an accompanying editorial.
“One would like to see patients followed for up to five years,” says Dr. Carrozza.
“There is nothing in this study that makes us feel surgery is the treatment of choice for patients with multi-vessel disease,” he adds.
Such a verdict will have to wait on the results of several randomized trials now underway, says Dr. Carrozza.
“This is just one piece of evidence we have right now before we get the final word, he explains.
And yet, Dr. Carrozza says, “This is the first really large study to look at this issue now” and thus should be considered by physicians and heart patients requiring treatment for blocked coronary arteries.
Types of Stents Compared in Second Study
Another report in the same issue of the journal compared the safety of bare-metal to drug-coated stents for so-called “off-label” uses - implants for conditions where there is no formal government approval.
About half of all stent implants are for such conditions.
Questions have been raised about the safety of drug-coated stents in off-label conditions, said a report by a group led by Dr. Oscar C. Marroquin, at the University of Pittsburgh.
But the study of 6,551 cases found a lower rate of complications and no increased risk of death or heart attack for drug-coated stents as compared to the bare-metal kind.
“These findings support the use of drug-eluting stents for off-label indications,” the researchers write.
That report comes on the heels of a study of off-label use of a different kind of stent, developed for use against bile duct obstructions in cancer patients.
More than 1 million patients got stents for off-label conditions between 2003 and 2006, according to a report by Dr. William Maisel, director of the Medical Safety Device Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
Some 1,000 malfunctions of the devices were reported, with 81 percent of them in off-label uses.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment April 1, 2008
Restless Legs Syndrome and Heart Disease Linked
Persons with restless legs syndrome, called RLS, face twice the risk of a stroke or heart disease compared to people who do not have the neurological condition, says a report in the journal Neurology.
The risk is greatest in people with the most frequent and the most severe symptoms of restless legs syndrome.“This shows that restless legs syndrome has salience beyond just symptoms,” says Dr. David Rye, at Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta.
Dr. Rye says the study shows that the connection should be recognized.
RLS is a neurological disorder characterized by restlessness and a need to move the legs. Symptoms start or become worse when you are resting. The symptoms occur mainly at night and can interfere with sleep.
Some 5 percent to 10 percent of the adult population suffers from the syndrome, according to the study.
Heart Study Reveals RLS Problems
The new study, the largest of its kind, looked at 3,433 men and women, with an average age of 68, who were enrolled in the Sleep Heart Health Study.
The study was originally designed to look at the cardiovascular consequences of sleep-disordered breathing.
A diagnosis of RLS was based on a questionnaire completed by all study participants. The participants also answered questions about cardiovascular disease and stroke. Almost 7 percent of women and 3.3 percent of men in the study had RLS.
Persons with the syndrome were more than twice as likely to have cardiovascular disease or stroke. The association was strongest among those who had RLS symptoms a minimum of 16 times a month and among those who said their symptoms were severe.
The study cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship, but such a link could make physiological sense.
Most people with RLS have up to 300 periodic leg movements a night, and those movements are associated with increases in blood pressure and heart rate, say the study authors.
Also, persons with RLS often also suffer from sleep deprivation, which has been associated with cardiovascular disease.
“The direct data would suggest that the disrupted sleep and arousals that occur with RLS are really what’s contributing to hypertension and heightened autonomic nervous system activity, which in turns leads to cardiovascular [problems],” says Dr. Rye.
“But this [study] can’t answer that kind of question,” he adds
The next study should look to see if treatments for RLS reduce the risk for heart disease and stroke, says Dr. Rye.
“Nobody has done that, because nobody has recognized that there was a problem,” he says.
More Study Needed, Say Experts
One expert adds a cautionary note to the study’s findings.
“This study is very well done, and the conclusions of the study are very measured,” says Dr. Paul Greene, at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center.
“In other words, the authors acknowledge that they can’t prove that what they’re studying actually causes strokes or heart attacks.
“They also could have picked up people with other syndromes, neuropathies [nerve damage], and things that could influence strokes and heart attacks,” he says.
“There are a lot of ways in which this study could be misleading,” he explains. “They will have to do something to follow up on this before pushing a panic button.”
Neither physician was involved with the study, which was conducted by researchers from Harvard and other institutions.
Earlier studies showed an association between restless legs syndrome and cardiovascular disease, but the studies had limitations.
RLS has also suffered from a public image problem, which may explain why so few studies have explored the condition.
“RLS has borne the brunt of a lot of skepticism,” explains Dr. Rye. “Snoring started out the same way… It took decades to convince primary-care physicians that we have to treat sleep apnea, that it’s not just a nuisance that dad snores.
“It [sleep apnea] has a huge added risk for obesity and stroke and hypertension and cardiovascular disease,” he says.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment March 1, 2008
Take a Mini-Stroke Seriously, Seek Medical Attention
Physicians call them transient ischemic attacks, but they are more commonly known as “mini-strokes.” But make no mistake - they can be deadly.
What is worse, many people who suffer such an attack rarely seek medical help.
Just one in 10 people who experienced symptoms of a transient ischemic attack (TIA) sought the proper emergency care, says a recent study published in the journal Stroke.
Urgent care is critical, because some people who suffer TIAs will have a major stroke as soon as a day or two after the mini-stroke.
“People need urgent medical attention not for the symptoms that have passed but for what might be coming,” says Dr. Keith Siller, medical director of the Comprehensive Stroke Care Center at New York University Medical Center.
“Many people don’t have a TIA before they have a stroke, so, in a sense, it’s fortunate to have one. Now you have a chance to intervene,” he says.
Symptoms Similar to Major Stroke
A transient ischemic attack occurs when blood flow to a part of the brain is temporarily blocked. When this occurs, symptoms come on suddenly and last anywhere from a few minutes to many hours.
Symptoms may include:
- sudden loss of speech or the ability to understand others
- rapid onset of weakness or numbness of the face, arm or leg, especially if it occurs on only one side of the body
- sudden loss of, or change in, vision that may occur in one or both eyes
- sudden difficulty walking or maintaining balance
One thing you may not feel with a stroke is pain.
“Pain is not the right thing to look for in stroke,” says Dr. Christian Schumacher, a neurologist at the Stern Stroke Center at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. “People expect that like a heart attack, which is often painful, that stroke will cause pain. But stroke symptoms are, in most cases, without pain.”
One exception, adds Dr. Siller, is what is known as a hemorrhagic stroke. In this instance, you would likely experience a sudden, severe, unexplained headache. If you have such a headache or any of the above symptoms, says Dr. Siller, you should get to the hospital immediately.
Unfortunately, not many people realize the need for urgent care. In the Stroke study, British researchers surveyed 241 people who had experienced a transient ischemic attack.
Just 44.4 percent sought medical care within a few hours of experiencing TIA symptoms, and only 10 percent sought any emergency medical care at all for their symptoms.
Another 44 percent waited longer than a day after their symptoms to seek care.
Persons with symptoms that lasted more than one hour, as well as those with motor symptoms such as difficulty walking, were more likely to seek care.
If the TIA symptoms occurred on a weekend, people were more likely to delay seeking treatment.
People “want to wait until they feel better, and most TIAs get better within an hour. If it gets better, people just think, ‘Oh, that was weird,’ and then they may call their doctor later,” says Dr. Schumacher.
Or, they may just forget the symptoms altogether, says Dr. Siller. “When symptoms are gone, and they feel better, people forget. But, it’s a misconception that if it went away, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Physicians Determine Severity
Dr. Schumacher notes, “Although TIA is called a mini-stroke; it’s like having a real stroke. It’s a warning sign for a major disabling stroke.”
Getting to the hospital as soon as possible after TIA or stroke symptoms begin is critical. The reason: Clot-busting drugs that can spare you many of stroke’s worst effects - including paralysis - have to be administered within several hours after the onset of symptoms to be effective, explains Dr. Siller.
“If you wait, we can’t do as much to help you,” he says.
Dr. Siller also recommends discussing your risk factors with your physician.
The most common risk factor for stroke is a past history of a stroke or a TIA. People with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and those with heart disease also have an increased risk of stroke, making it even more important for them to act quickly if they have any TIA symptoms.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment February 7, 2008
Winter Months Bring Elevated Blood Pressure, Experts Say
It turns out blood pressure has a chill factor: Hypertension is harder to control in colder weather, according to experts at a recent meeting of the American Heart Association.
This concept has been around a while says a heart expert.
“It has been noted for decades that people’s blood pressure tends to be a little bit harder to control or a little bit higher in cold climates,” says Dr. Kenneth Baker, at the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Temple, Texas.
Cold = Vasoconstriction = Hypertension
The study was led by Dr. Ross Fletcher of Georgetown University. The researchers drew on a vast database: the Veterans Administration’s storehouse of 1.8 billion vital statistics records.
The five-year study looked at electronic health records for almost 1.2 million patients cared for at 15 VA hospitals located at different latitudes: Anchorage; Baltimore; Boston; Chicago; Fargo, ND; Honolulu; Houston; West Los Angeles; Miami; Minneapolis; New York City; Philadelphia; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Portland, Oregon; and Washington, DC.
The average age of participants was 66. Fifty-one percent were Caucasian, 21 percent were Hispanic, and 27 percent were African American. Less than 4 percent were female.
Within the sample, almost 444,000 veterans had high blood pressure (based on readings of more than 140/90 on three separate days).
And, regardless of their locale, patients experienced an average difference of almost 8 percent in getting their high blood pressure back to normal between winter and summer, with that feat being much tougher in winter.
Outside expert Dr. Baker speculated about any number of reasons.
“My guess is that one of the top reasons is, when you’re in a cold atmosphere, you vasoconstrict [blood vessels narrow],” he says.
“If you stick your hand in ice water, it has the same effect,” notes Dr. Baker. “Blood pressure goes up a little, and in hotter climates, sitting by the pool in your swimming suit, the vessels in the skin are dilating, you lose water and sweat off salt, and blood pressure drops.”
There are other possible factors as well. Cold medicines people take in the winter can raise blood pressure, as can non-steroidal anti-inflammatory painkillers.
Winter Brings Alcohol, Coffee, and Food
Persons also tend to be more depressed in the darker months, leading to more alcohol and coffee consumption, both of which can raise blood pressure, says Dr. Baker.
A more obvious reason: Persons are also often more sedentary in the winter, staying inside and eating more. This can have a secondary effect - weight gain - which also contributes to hypertension.
Dr. Baker believes that these biological or lifestyle differences are more likely to explain the findings than southern or northern climate or the amount of light.
Overall, however, VA hospitals in all the cities studied showed improvements of about 4 percent per year in their ability to keep patients’ average blood pressure under control, the study found.
Always consult your physician for more information.
Add comment January 1, 2008
