A healthy human heart pumps 10 pints of blood more than 1400 times a day. It is the hardest working muscle in the body.
Treating Angina
Angina (chest pains), along with breathing difficulty during exertion, is a sign that heart disease is in its early stages. Angina can be treated with medication that reduces the heart's overall workload.
Treating a Sudden Heart Attack
Administering fast-acting, clot-dissolving drugs may be the first step in treating a diagnosed heart attack. An alternative is emergency balloon angioplasty (to open the blocked artery. In any case, getting the patient to an ER immediately minimizes damage to the heart muscle.
Technologies to Diagnose and Treat Heart Disease
- Exercise stress tests measure symptoms, blood pressure and EKG during exercise.
- Imaging procedures provide still or moving pictures through X-ray, fluoroscopy, MRI or CT scans.
- Electrophysiology studies examine heart rhythm disturbances using electrodes positioned over the patient's heart.
- Cardiac catheterization diagnoses and/or treats an obstruction. (An angiogram introduces dye through a catheter to observe the heart's blood vessel flow by X-ray; a balloon angioplasty procedure uses a tiny balloon-tipped catheter to help unclog blockages.)
- Surgical procedures can bypass clogged arteries, replace valves, insert pacemakers and defibrillators or replace the entire heart.
del.icio.us
Digg this
