http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. New results from the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) Observational Study provide additional evidence that aspirin may reduce the risk of death in postmenopausal women who have heart disease or who have had a stroke. Jacques Rossouw, M.D., chief of the Women's Health Initiative Branch at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI), is available to comment on these findings. NHLBI, part of the National Institutes of Health, funded the research. http://phys.org/news156099931.html Medicine & Health Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:06:24 EST news156099931 For every gram of salt that Americans reduce in their diets daily, a quarter of a million fewer new heart disease cases and over 200,000 fewer deaths would occur over a decade, researchers said at the American Heart Association's 49th Annual Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology and Prevention. http://phys.org/news156010623.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:18:34 EST news156010623 The use of common and readily available screening tests—like the ankle brachial index (ABI)—along with traditional risk scoring systems—such as the Framingham Risk Score—has the potential to prevent devastating heart attacks in thousands of individuals who are not originally thought to be at high risk (according to Framingham alone), say researchers at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 34th Annual Scientific Meeting. About 25 percent of all heart attacks or sudden cardiac deaths in the United States occur in individuals thought to be at low risk. http://phys.org/news155939943.html Medicine & Health Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:39:22 EST news155939943 When Joyce Moss recently arrived at Loyola University Hospital with a life-threatening heart attack, it took just 42 minutes to perform an emergency balloon angioplasty. http://phys.org/news155495792.html Medicine & Health Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:16:58 EST news155495792 Following an acute coronary syndrome such as a heart attack or unstable angina, patients who receive a medication to reduce the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding that may be associated with the use of the antiplatelet drug clopidogrel and aspirin have an increased risk of subsequent hospitalization for acute coronary syndrome or death, according to a study in the March 4 issue of JAMA. http://phys.org/news155320506.html Medicine & Health Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:36:06 EST news155320506 We've been told for years that popping a multivitamin will make us healthier and prolong our lives, but a major study recently found that daily multivitamins don't make a difference in the rate of breast or colon cancer, heart attack, stroke, blood clots or mortality. http://phys.org/news155240777.html Medicine & Health Mon, 02 Mar 2009 18:26:32 EST news155240777 It's called the obesity paradox. Although obese people are more apt to suffer from inflammatory diseases, such as diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, they are also more likely to survive a major attack caused by one of those conditions. http://phys.org/news154882304.html Medicine & Health Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:52:58 EST news154882304 Individuals with diastolic blood pressure under 70 mm Hg coupled with an elevated systolic blood pressure may have a greater risk of heart attack and stroke than indicated by the systolic blood pressure values alone, according to a UC Irvine study. http://phys.org/news154201804.html Medicine & Health Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:51:34 EST news154201804 Two years ago, a major study found that many patients who receive delayed treatment for a heart attack do just as well with drugs alone as they do with drugs plus stents to prop open their blocked arteries. Now, further analysis shows that the drug option is cheaper and that there is no meaningful long-term difference in quality of life between the two options. http://phys.org/news154201447.html Medicine & Health Wed, 18 Feb 2009 17:45:05 EST news154201447 The elderly represent a growing proportion of patients presenting with acute myocardial infarction (MI) complicated by cardiogenic shock (CS). CS occurs when the heart fails to supply enough blood to the organs of the body, and remains the most common cause of death after heart attack among people 75 years of age and older. Proper selection of older patients for invasive management of heart disease remains a serious medical challenge, especially as the elderly are frequently underrepresented in or excluded from clinical trials. http://phys.org/news154028661.html Medicine & Health Mon, 16 Feb 2009 17:44:49 EST news154028661 Researchers at University College London and St George's, University of London measured recent exposure to tobacco smoke in non-smoking middle-aged men taking part in the British Regional Heart Study by measuring the levels of cotinine - a compound carried in the blood - at two time points 20 years apart. http://phys.org/news153569502.html Medicine & Health Wed, 11 Feb 2009 10:12:19 EST news153569502 When it comes to treating heart attacks, experience matters. New research shows that patients have a much better chance of survival when both their hospital and their physician have a strong track record in treating heart attack with angioplasty and stenting. http://phys.org/news153424220.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:58:44 EST news153424220 Doctors have long noticed that depression dramatically increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and death after a heart attack, but for years they have been lacking the pieces of the puzzle that would explain why. http://phys.org/news153416500.html Medicine & Health Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:43:06 EST news153416500 The largest study ever completed of genetic factors associated with heart attacks has identified nine genetic regions - three not previously described - that appear to increase the risk for early-onset myocardial infarction. The report from the Myocardial Infarction Genetics Consortium, based on information from a total of 26,000 inviduals in 10 countries, will appear in Nature Genetics and is receiving early online release. http://phys.org/news153323513.html Medicine & Health Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:52:28 EST news153323513 Neurobiologists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified pathways that allow microscopic worms to survive in a low-oxygen, or hypoxic, environment. http://phys.org/news152461216.html Medicine & Health Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:20:47 EST news152461216 Patients taking the common cardiac drug clopidogrel following a heart attack are at a significantly higher risk of a recurrence if they are also taking widely used acid-lowering medications called proton pump inhibitors, a new study published online in CMAJ has found. http://phys.org/news152373665.html Medicine & Health Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:01:20 EST news152373665 (PhysOrg.com) -- Exciting research into blood clotting by British Heart Foundation (BHF) researchers working at the University of Bristol will take us a step closer to better heart attack prevention and treatment. Blood clots can be both life-saving and life-threatening; life-saving when they stop bleeding, but life-threatening when they form in diseased arteries feeding the heart. Here they can cause a heart attack, and do so in 146,000 people in the UK every year. http://phys.org/news151679743.html Medicine & Health Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:16:09 EST news151679743 Images that for the first time show bleeding inside the heart after people have suffered a heart attack have been captured by scientists, in a new study published today in the journal Radiology. http://phys.org/news151564018.html Medicine & Health Mon, 19 Jan 2009 05:06:58 EST news151564018 A new national study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had cholesterol levels that would indicate they were not at high risk for a cardiovascular event, according to current national cholesterol guidelines. http://phys.org/news150990512.html Medicine & Health Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:48:32 EST news150990512 In the aftermath of a heart attack, the body's own defenses may contribute to future heart failure. Authors of a new study believe they have identified a protein that plays an important role in a process that replaces dead heart muscle with stiffening scar tissue. The researchers are hopeful that the findings will lead to the development of new therapies to prevent this damage. http://phys.org/news148571329.html Biology Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:48:49 EST news148571329 A heart damaged by heart attack is usually broken, at least partially, for good. The injury causes excessive scar tissue to form, and this plays a role in permanently keeping heart muscle from working at full capacity. http://phys.org/news148487985.html Medicine & Health Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:39:45 EST news148487985 Men and women have about the same in-hospital death rate for heart attack — but women are twice as likely to die if hospitalized for a more severe type of heart attack, according to a report in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. http://phys.org/news147979977.html Medicine & Health Mon, 08 Dec 2008 17:32:57 EST news147979977 Heart experts at Johns Hopkins have evidence that life-saving coronary angioplasty at community hospitals is safer when physicians and hospital staff have more experience with the procedure. http://phys.org/news145773364.html Medicine & Health Thu, 13 Nov 2008 04:36:04 EST news145773364 In recent years, women, particularly younger women, experienced larger improvements in hospital mortality after myocardial infarction than men, according to a new study. http://phys.org/news145722576.html Medicine & Health Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:29:36 EST news145722576 By adding the results of an imaging technique to the traditional risk factors for coronary heart disease, doctors at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston found they were able to improve prediction of heart attacks in people previously considered low risk. http://phys.org/news145640287.html Medicine & Health Tue, 11 Nov 2008 15:38:07 EST news145640287 A new set of clinical performance measures will help doctors and hospitals give the best possible care to heart attack patients by providing up-to-date tools for gauging how closely they're sticking to guideline recommendations and where they need to improve. http://phys.org/news145547535.html Medicine & Health Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:52:15 EST news145547535 This year, about 450,000 Americans will die of coronary heart disease – the leading cause of death for both men and women. Although we have made great strides in preventing and treating heart disease, we continue to explore the complex mechanisms involved in cardiovascular disease, and we are eager to refine risk assessment tools and preventive strategies to reduce the incidence of heart attack and stroke. http://phys.org/news145531965.html Medicine & Health Mon, 10 Nov 2008 09:32:45 EST news145531965 A team of Johns Hopkins biochemists has identified a mixed bag of five key proteins out of thousands secreted into blood draining from the heart's blood vessels that may together or in certain quantities form the basis of a far more accurate early warning test than currently in use of impending heart attack in people with severely reduced blood flow, or ischemia. http://phys.org/news145458990.html Chemistry Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:16:30 EST news145458990 Hispanic patients were 57 percent less likely than Caucasian patients to undergo coronary artery bypass surgery (CABG) one year after successful angioplasty, a type of percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) to open blockages in the coronary arteries. Hispanics also had a trend toward lower rates of overall repeat revascularization procedures including stenting and bypass surgery, according to a study presented at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008. http://phys.org/news145458880.html Medicine & Health Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:14:40 EST news145458880 (PhysOrg.com) -- A Harvard-led study shows that the risk of heart attack and stroke among subjects with “silent heart disease” — and normal cholesterol levels — can be dramatically reduced by the use of an already widely prescribed class of drugs. http://phys.org/news145450584.html Medicine & Health Sun, 09 Nov 2008 10:56:24 EST news145450584