Cardiovascular Disease – Cardiologist Overview

Considerations of Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular Disease is prevalent in the United States.  Dr. Amy Epps, Cardiologist, indicates Congestive Heart Failure and Bypasses are commonplace.  Millions of Americas have one or more forms of cardiovascular disease.

Although many people don’t realize it, heart disease is the most common killer today.  Cardiovascular disease outweighs the next five or six common causes of death.

Cardiovascular disease is treatable and preventable

Cardiovascular disease can include the vascular diseases as well as heart disease.

Classic symptoms of cardiovascular disease can include any of the following:

• Can show up as a squeezing or heaviness in the chest, or a feeling of pressure in the chest.
• can be unexplained pain in the lower jaw.
• Pain down the left arm
• Episodes of breaking out in a sweat
• Profound shortness of breath for no reason
• Short of breath doing things you used to be able to do easily

Often, symptoms go undetectable, and people may think they are not impacted, but absence of crushing chest pain does not mean you are not having some sort of heart disease.

The American Heart Association says these are key risk factors for Cardiovascular Disease:

• High blood pressure
• High cholesterol
• Smoking
• Physical inactivity
• Body fat
• Family history
• Diabetes

Diabetes in particular is especially serious – it is such a strong risk factor for heart disease. It is estimated that 2400 Americans are killed each day from heart disease… that is one death somewhere in the United States every 36 seconds.  The 2007 estimated indirect cost for heart disease was $431 Billion dollars.

We are developing better treatments for cardiovascular disease all the time, such as these:

• Stints are getting to be more designer focused
• Drug coated stints – coated with chemotherapy to treat the diseased area for months
• Robotic cardiac surgery – makes cardiac surgery much less invasive – now is minimally invasive robotic surgery
• Perfecting technology for ablations of the arrhythmias to focus on it and get rid of it

Prevention of cardiovascular disease is the best key, and these are the tools to prevent cardiovascular disease:

• Awareness
• Diet modification
• Regular exercise
• Medication if high risk

Here’s a few statistics that I think are impressive to illustrate the problem of cardiovascular disease.  According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/about.htm…

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. More than half of the deaths due to heart disease in 2008 were in men.¹
• In 2008, over 616,000 people died of heart disease. Heart disease caused almost 25% of deaths—almost one in every four—in the United States.¹
• Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease. In 2008, 405,309 people died from coronary heart disease.¹
• Every year about 785,000 Americans have a first coronary attack. Another 470,000 who have already had one or more coronary attacks have another attack.²
• In 2010, coronary heart disease alone was projected to cost the United States $108.9 billion.³ This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity.

The CDC Released Data on Hypertension, High Cholesterol, and Diabetes

April 26, 2010, Katrina Woznicki of WebMd Health News reports — Nearly half of the U.S. population has at least one of three diagnosed or undiagnosed chronic conditions — high blood pressure, high cholesterol, or diabetes — all major risk factors for heart disease, the leading cause of death among Americans, according to a new CDC study.

Data collected from the ongoing National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey shows that 45% of Americans had one of these three conditions either diagnosed or undiagnosed; 13% of adults had two of these conditions, and 3% had all three conditions. CDC researchers also found that 15% of adults also had one or more of these conditions undiagnosed.

It is well known that high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes all increase the risk for cardiovascular disease, a condition that affects more than 81 million Americans and accounts for one out of every three deaths in the U.S. What is less known is the co-existence of these three conditions based on race/ethnicity, as well as the prevalence of diagnosed vs. undiagnosed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes among these groups.

The study shows that about 8% of adults have undiagnosed high blood pressure, 8% have undiagnosed high cholesterol, and 3% of have undiagnosed diabetes. The proportion of adults with these undiagnosed conditions was similar across racial/ethnic groups.

Additional information about Cardiovascular Disease can be found my blog.

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