Battling Heart and Stroke

The Summer Olympic Games in Beijing have just started. What better way to start this week than talk about athletes’ heart rates?

There are certain tests that professional athletes have to go through before they can complete. I am not only referring to those tests that detect the use of performance enhancing drugs. Athletes also have to go through tests to determine their health status. A major determining test in the preparticipation screening of athletes is the electrocardiogram or ECG which reads the heart’s electrical activity and look at the heart rate patterns. ECG measurements are usually done while at rest. Athletes who have abnormalities in their ECG are disqualified - for their own safety. Many cardiac events happen during sports competition.

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Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a revision of a policy statement from 1 January 1998 regarding lipid screening in children.

The new guidelines recommend early cholesterol screening of children and adolescents with a family history of high cholesterol or cardiovascular disease as well as children who are significantly overweight. Lipid screening should start as early as 2 years old, should be repeated 3 to 5 years later, and shouldn’t be put off beyond the 10^th year of a child’s life.

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What is a coronary calcium scan?

A coronary calcium scan is a diagnostic tool that looks for the calcium deposits in the walls arteries of the heart.

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Is home monitoring by patients with heart disease and/or hypertension a feasible alternative? According to experts and results of recent studies, there’s actually no place like home for monitoring cardiovascular patients.

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Having problems with your hearing? Maybe it is time to check your stroke risk.

A nation-wide research study in Taiwan based on health insurance records indicates that sudden loss of hearing might be an early sign of risk to stroke. In fact, this symptom may be able to predict the actual stroke two years before it happens.

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Instead of featuring a heart(y) celebrity this month, I would like to pay my respects to Tim Russert of NBC.

I was travelling around Western Europe when I heard of his unexpected death. Even here in the old continent, his name and face was known, especially among the English-speaking community. Russert was a respected political journalist whose opinion carried a lot of weight in the political scene.

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Is there a link between dementia and ministrokes? This seems very likely, according to researchers who conducted studies on several people with dementia or cognitive impairment.

What is dementia?

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Are you a white-coat hypertensive?

White-coat hypertension is a type of blood pressure (BP) problem that occurs only when BP is measured in a clinical setting, e.g. by health professional in a “white coat”. However, BP measured at home or in another environment stays normal. Unlike “real” hypertension, white-coat hypertension has always been dismissed as harmless and psychosomatic in nature. This led to white-coat hypertensives being ignored as hypochrondriacs who do not need any therapy.

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At last, a new device to help those with coronary heart disease. Coronary arteries are the main blood vessels which supply your heart muscles with their well-needed blood rich in oxygen. Unfortunately, these blood vessels can get clogged up by deposits of plaques. Plaques are made up of cholesterol-rich fat molecules, calcium and cellular debris in the blood. Plaque deposits can cause the coronary arteries to get narrow and can damage blood vessel walls, or cut off blood supply to the heart. Plaques can be classified in two categories:

• Hard plaques tend to stay in play and make arterial walls thick, hard, and inflexible - resulting in atherosclerosis.
• Soft plaques are more unstable and have lipid cores . These fatty deposits on arterial walls have the tendency to rupture or break off and get carried by the blood flow. They are then transported to other parts of the body can cause blood clots and result in a partial or total obstruction of an artery and cut off the blood supply to tissues and to vital organs such as the brain, the liver, or the kidney. When fatty plaques in the coronary artery rupture, blood clots can form which can lead to heart attacks.

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In the evaluation of stroke it’s critical for the treating physician to know what type of stroke has occurred because it affects what type of treatment is given. As radiologists, one of the key pieces of information that we can provide to a doctor taking care of a stroke patient, is whether the type of stroke that that patient has suffered is one that we call an ischemic stroke, or one that we call a hemorrhagic stroke. With an ischemic stroke, not enough blood is getting to the brain, and that might be helped by a blood thinner. With a hemorrhagic stroke, the patient has already suffered a bleed in the brain and a blood thinner might make that condition worse.

Two of the most commonly used radiology tests for stroke patients are CT and MRI. CT scans also known as CAT scans, produce an image of the brain that can show areas of excessive bleeding or blocked blood flow. The test is very quick, which allows for rapid treatment if a problem is found. MRI scans can detect minute brain abnormalities which are too small or located in regions of the brain that cannot be seen well by CAT scans.

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