Category: Cardiology 101

posts here focus on a variety of topics all about the heart and how it works

“I rang the bell again. No one came.”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

There are a number of issues that leaped out at me about the hospital story you’re about to read.  Let’s see how many of them you observe, too – and how many could have been prevented.  This story is told by Ann, an Australian heart patient whose cardiac journey began in 2007 when she was 51 years old. But over the years since then, she has continued to suffer debilitating cardiac symptoms almost every day.

Her symptoms include not just chest pain, but pain throughout her upper back, jaw, shoulder, neck or arm, occasionally with severe shortness of breath. Despite taking a fistful of daily heart meds and wearing a nitro patch to help manage pain, Ann is rarely able to sleep through an entire night without being awoken by these symptoms. And here’s why . . .
Continue reading ““I rang the bell again. No one came.”” →

First we had peer review – and now patient review!

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

You already know that research papers submitted for publication in medical journals are first subject to peer review before a final decision to accept the paper is made. Peer review is a time-honoured way to evaluate scientific or academic papers by others working in the same field.  But The British Medical Journal, the world’s oldest, has launched a unique initiative to include patient review of submitted studies as well. Here’s how BMJ explains this project:
 Continue reading “First we had peer review – and now patient review!” →

What women need to know about pregnancy complications and heart disease

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

 by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

“I’d love to speak about the patient’s perspective at your Toronto conference in June,” I said last winter in response to an invitation from Dr. Graeme Smith, a Canadian obstetrician who teaches at Queen’s University in Kingston and specializes in high-risk pregnancies. “But traveling halfway across the country is just too hard on me these days.”

As the unofficial poster child for the well-documented link between pregnancy complications and premature cardiovascular disease, I was already very familiar with Dr. Smith’s work.  See also: “Pregnancy complications strongly linked to heart disease“

Shortly after I turned down his kind invitation to speak, he invited me again (hey, he’s persistent!) – but this time he offered the irresistible option of speaking to the Toronto audience via teleconference:

“Does this mean I can stay in my jammies, drink coffee at my kitchen table, and just speak to your group over the phone?!”

Continue reading “What women need to know about pregnancy complications and heart disease” →

Doc chat: in the cath lab with a “radial evangelist”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 16 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Like most heart patients who get their blocked coronary arteries opened up (or “revascularized“) at Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital, my stent was implanted by inserting a slim catheter into an artery in my wrist and threading it up, up, up into my heart, a procedure known in the cath labs of the world as a Transradial Intervention (TRI).

But if I had been in an American hospital, my cardiologist would have more than likely threaded that catheter through the larger femoral artery in my upper thigh instead of my wrist, despite growing evidence suggesting significantly safer results, less bleeding, fewer complications, superior outcomes, and resounding patient preference for the radial approach.(1) In fact, while cardiologists across Canada, Europe and Asia are moving towards using radial as a default access, American cardiologists lag behind. 

I just don’t get it. Canadian coronary arteries simply cannot be that much different from those of American heart patients. Continue reading “Doc chat: in the cath lab with a “radial evangelist”” →