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Those curious cardiac enzymes

15 May

by Carolyn Thomas

When I showed up in the Emergency Department with textbook heart attack symptoms – chest pain, nausea, sweating, and pain radiating down my left arm – the hospital staff snapped to work and immediately ordered a flurry of cardiac tests. These included an EKG, blood tests and a treadmill stress test. But all test results came back “normal”. I was then told that I was in the “right demographic” for acid reflux before being sent home – less than five hours after the onset of symptoms that day.

I left hospital that morning feeling terribly embarrassed for having made such a fuss over just a little case of indigestion.  It was only much later – after finally being correctly diagnosed, taken directly from the E.R. to O.R. and admitted to the cardiac care unit – when I learned that my “normal” blood tests may have been “normal” that day because I had been sent home too soon.  (more…)

Taking aspirin at first sign of heart attack: good or bad advice?

3 May

To:      Dr. James M. Wright, MD PhD CRCP(C)  Editor-in-Chief, Therapeutics Letter, Therapeutics Initiative: Evidence-Based Drug Therapy*, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC Canada
From:  Carolyn Thomas

Dear Dr. Wright,

I’m a heart attack survivor and patient advocate who blogs about women and heart disease at Heart Sisters.

Recently, a well-known family physician doing a presentation on heart health to about 200 members of our local cardiac rehab alumni group told us about a new protocol to be followed at the first symptoms of a heart attack -  one that’s apparently superior to the current “Call 911 and chew one full-strength aspirin” patient recommendation.

Instead, he favours something new that he called Axe the Aspirin.  He waved a little plastic baggie with two pills in it as he spoke, adding that he carries this in his wallet at all times, “just in case”.  What he was waving overhead was a mega dose of the anti-platelet drug Plavix (600 mg – about nine times the standard therapeutic dosage that heart patients take) along with the statin/cholesterol drug Crestor – to be taken together at the first symptoms of possible heart attack. He told us, quite emphatically:

“We used to recommend aspirin, but this Plavix/Crestor combo is better!”  (more…)

What’s the single biggest health threat women face?

21 Apr

One out of every two of you reading this right now will be impacted by cardiovascular disease in your lifetime, warns cardiologist Dr. Noel Bairey-Merz, Director of the Cedars Sinai Women’s Heart Center in Los Angeles. And worse, diagnostic and treatment strategies “developed in men, by men, for men for the last 50 years” are not working so well for women.

Go grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy this must-see presentation.

The unforgettable diagnosis: “You’re having a heart attack!”

24 Mar

Jennifer Donelan was a 36-year old television news reporter for ABC News 7 in Washington, DC, covering a dramatic story one day about a local 4-month old baby girl who had been found in her crib, unresponsive. After her live shot on the 5 o’clock newscast, Jennifer was waiting near her car when she started to feel a very strange pain in her chest. We pick up her dramatic story there, as told in Jennifer’s own words:

“I remember looking at my car and thinking: ‘I need to go home and lay down.’ Then the pain started to worsen. I took a few steps and my left arm went numb.  (more…)

Too embarrassed to call 911 during a heart attack?

12 Mar

by Carolyn Thomas

When I was sent home from the Emergency Department with a misdiagnosis of acid reflux, I felt horribly embarrassed that I’d made such a fuss over nothing (well, nothing but textbook heart attack symptoms like chest pain, nausea, sweating and pain radiating down my left arm).  It then took me two full weeks of increasingly debilitating cardiac symptoms before I forced myself to return to that same hospital, desperately ill yet still not completely certain this could be heart-related. After all, hadn’t an Emergency physician with the letters M.D. after his name told me quite emphatically:

“This is NOT your heart!”

It was only when my symptoms became truly unbearable that I knew I had to go back to the E.R. This extreme reluctance to get help is what doctors call “treatment-seeking delay“ behaviour, and in the middle of a heart attack, it can be a deadly delay. We already know that the average person in mid-heart attack will wait four hours before getting medical help.  Why? One reason may well be that we’re too simply too embarrassed to attract attention to ourselves during a heart attack.   (more…)

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