Angioplasty

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

Jerry Lawler, who had a heart attack Monday during a live broadcast of WWE's "Monday Night Raw," is in the Cardiac Care Unit at a Montreal hospital and is heavily sedated after undergoing a coronary angioplasty procedure. He remains in critical but stable condition. In the procedure, a balloon was put in at least one of Lawler's clogged coronary arteries to open it. A small wire tube was then inserted to help prevent the artery from closing again. "As of this morning, Jerry "The King" Lawler is in a cardiac care unit and all his vital signs are stable," the WWE said in a statement.

Performing angioplasty and angiography through the radial artery of the arm is as effective as the traditional method of entering through the femoral artery of the groin, but has fewer complications and is more comfortable for the patient, researchers reported Monday. And for rescue operations performed while the patient is suffering a heart attack caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery, using the radial artery is superior, the researchers reported at a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, who retired as Dodgers manager after a heart attack in 1996, had a “mild heart attack” Monday while in New York City. He is 84, and reports say he had a stent inserted to clear a blocked coronary artery and is resting stably and comfortably at a hospital in New York City. What is a “mild heart attack,” anyway?  “A 'mild heart attack' is like being a little bit pregnant -- it's still a heart attack,” said cardiologist Dr. Robert Greenfield, chairman of medicine at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley.

Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, who retired as Dodgers manager after a heart attack in 1996, had a “mild heart attack” Monday while in New York City. He is 84, and reports say he had a stent inserted to clear a blocked coronary artery and is resting stably and comfortably at a hospital in New York City. What is a “mild heart attack,” anyway?  “A 'mild heart attack' is like being a little bit pregnant -- it's still a heart attack,” said cardiologist Dr. Robert Greenfield, chairman of medicine at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center in Fountain Valley.

You can lead a cardiologist to water but, apparently, you cannot make him drink. Despite the results of a recent major clinical trial that demonstrated conclusively that good medical therapy is just as effective as balloon angioplasty or coronary artery bypass surgery for treating stable coronary disease, fewer than half of cardiologists use such therapy before subjecting their patients to the much more expensive surgical intervention, researchers said...

Performing angioplasty and angiography through the radial artery of the arm is as effective as the traditional method of entering through the femoral artery of the groin, but has fewer complications and is more comfortable for the patient, researchers reported Monday. And for rescue operations performed while the patient is suffering a heart attack caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery, using the radial artery is superior, the researchers said at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans.

Actor Patrick Stewart is recovering at home after undergoing an angioplasty procedure earlier this week to widen an artery, his publicist said Friday. Angioplasty involves the use of a catheter to place a small inflatable balloon in a narrowed blood vessel. When the balloon is inflated, the blood flows in the artery more freely. The 64-year-old Stewart -- who played Professor Charles Xavier in the "X-Men" film and its sequel and Capt.

Diabetics were twice as likely to die in the nine years after balloon angioplasty, a common procedure used to treat blocked arteries, a new study said. About 36% of diabetics died within nine years after balloon angioplasty, a rate double that of non-diabetics, the study found. Diabetics also experienced considerably higher rates of heart attacks as well as bypass surgeries and repeat angioplasties, said David Faxon, lead author of the study in the American Heart Assn. journal, Circulation.

The best path to a clogged heart may sometimes be through the wrist. About a million artery-clearing angioplasties are performed in the United States each year, and the usual route is a tube to the heart threaded through an artery in the groin. Now a major study shows that going through the wrist instead can significantly lower the risk of bleeding -- without the discomfort of lying flat for hours while the incision site seals. Just 1 in 100 angioplasties is done via the wrist, and the approach isn't for everyone.

Heart attack patients are getting angioplasty treatments much faster than they did just five years ago, new research shows. Most heart attack patients who need the lifesaving procedure receive it within just 90 minutes of being admitted to the hospital, according to a study released Monday in the journal Circulation. Yale researchers looked at the "door-to-balloon" times of more than 300,000 patients who underwent emergency angioplasty from January 2005 through September 2010. The door-to-balloon time is how long it takes to get the artery-opening angioplasty after the patient has entered the hospital.

You can lead a cardiologist to water but, apparently, you cannot make him drink. Despite the results of a recent major clinical trial that demonstrated conclusively that good medical therapy is just as effective as balloon angioplasty or coronary artery bypass surgery for treating stable coronary disease, fewer than half of cardiologists use such therapy before subjecting their patients to the much more expensive surgical intervention, researchers said...

Performing angioplasty and angiography through the radial artery of the arm is as effective as the traditional method of entering through the femoral artery of the groin, but has fewer complications and is more comfortable for the patient, researchers reported Monday. And for rescue operations performed while the patient is suffering a heart attack caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery, using the radial artery is superior, the researchers said at the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Cardiology in New Orleans.

Performing angioplasty and angiography through the radial artery of the arm is as effective as the traditional method of entering through the femoral artery of the groin, but has fewer complications and is more comfortable for the patient, researchers reported Monday. And for rescue operations performed while the patient is suffering a heart attack caused by a complete blockage of a coronary artery, using the radial artery is superior, the researchers reported at a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology.

Tens or even hundreds of thousands of Americans are having coronary artery angioplasty and stenting every year when they should be having bypass grafts, and the result is an extra 5,000 or more deaths annually, researchers said Sunday. Patients and cardiologists frequently prefer angioplasty and the insertion of a stent to keep arteries open because it is quicker and easier; patients go home sooner and return to work more quickly. But new data from a major European-American study on more than 1,800 patients show that three years after the procedure, those who got stents were 28% more likely to suffer a major event, such as a heart attack or stroke, and 46% more likely to require a repeat procedure to reopen arteries.

A major new study on 1,800 patients with heart disease has found that coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) are superior to angioplasty and stenting in the long run. New findings presented at a Geneva meeting of the European Assn. for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery show that patients who received angioplasty and a stent to hold arteries open were 28% more likely to suffer from a major adverse cardiovascular event, such as stroke or heart attack, were 46% more likely to require a second procedure to reopen the blocked blood vessels and were 22% more likley to die. Given that cardiovascular surgeons have suspected the benefits of bypass for a long time, the question is why angioplasty is so much more popular.

A major new study on 1,800 patients with heart disease has found that coronary artery bypass grafts (CABG) are superior to angioplasty and stenting in the long run. New findings presented at a Geneva meeting of the European Assn. for Cardio-Thoracic Surgery show that patients who received angioplasty and a stent to hold arteries open were 28% more likely to suffer from a major adverse cardiovascular event, such as stroke or heart attack, were 46% more likely to require a second procedure to reopen the blocked blood vessels and were 22% more likley to die. Given that cardiovascular surgeons have suspected the benefits of bypass for a long time, the question is why angioplasty is so much more popular.

Women who undergo angioplasty--a common procedure in which a tiny balloon is used to reopen clogged arteries--are 10 times more likely than men to die in the hospital, according to a study that may renew debate about a possible bias in the treatment of female heart patients. The study, which appears today in Circulation, a journal published by the American Heart Assn., found that women angioplasty patients were likely to be older and sicker than the men.

For most patients with diabetes and clogged arteries who have not had a heart attack, treatment with drugs and lifestyle changes are as effective at reducing the risk of death as immediate bypass surgery or angioplasty, researchers said Sunday. For diabetics with a more severe form of heart disease requiring immediate surgery, bypass surgery is more effective than angioplasty at reducing risk of heart attacks and strokes, but not deaths, researchers reported at a meeting of the American Diabetes Assn.

Drugs and heart-bypass surgery protected patients better than artery-opening angioplasty and stents, according to two studies published online Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine. In one of the studies, bypass surgery kept people alive as well as angioplasty with less risk that the artery would clog again. In the second, researchers found patients treated after a heart attack survived longer on drugs while their care cost $7,000 less than for those given angioplasties.