Health Discovery: Heart Defibrillator Dilemma; Implant Advice, Guidelines - AARP Bulletin

by: Katharine Greider | from: AARP Bulletin

New research indicates that more than 20 percent of all heart defibrillators are surgically implanted in patients who may not be good candidates for the devices — leaving men and women who have these machines in a quandary as they may face dangerous health risks.

The research, led by Duke University heart specialist Sana M. Al-Khatib, M.D., found that patients who received a defibrillator but whose heart condition didn't match recommended criteria were more likely to die or suffer from a complication in the hospital.

What do you do if you've been implanted with a defibrillator? And if you're told you need one, how can you tell whether the advice is solid?

Here are the facts heart patients may want to consider — along with the guidelines that list which heart patients shouldn't get a defibrillator.

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Vitamin D Marker for HF Deaths from MedPage Today

By Charles Bankhead, Staff Writer, MedPage Today

Heart failure death occurred two to three times more often in people with vitamin D insufficiency or deficiency compared with those who had normal levels of the vitamin, according to data from a government survey.

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Medical News: Stress of Prostate Cancer Diagnosis May Be Deadly - in Hematology/Oncology, Prostate Cancer from MedPage Today

Slow Walkers Three Times More Likely to Die From CVD

News Author: Lisa Nainggolan

A new study has shown that walking speed over 6 m in older people is predictive of cardiovascular mortality, with those in the slowest tertile three times more likely to suffer CV death over five years than those who walked faster [1]. Dr Julien Dumurgier (INSERM, Paris, France) and colleagues say this kind of walking test could be part of a general clinical assessment of those aged over 65; they report their findings online November 10, 2009 in BMJ.

"We found that old persons who walk slowly have an increased risk of death, in particular cardiovascular death; it's an easy message," second author, epidemiologist Dr Alexis Elbaz (INSERM), told heartwire . "This shows us the very important role of trying to maintain good fitness in older persons," he added.
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Headphones May Threaten Heart-Device Performance - Forbes.com

(HealthDay News) -- A U.S. study offers more evidence that portable headphones can create magnetic interference that might make implanted defibrillators and pacemakers malfunction.

Using the headphones over the ears doesn't appear to be a problem, but storing them in a shirt or jacket pocket near the chest or allowing them to hang near the heart could spell trouble, researchers found.

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How Do You Know If You’re at High Risk for a Heart Attack? - Health Blog - WSJ

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By Jacob Goldstein

If you’re 20 or older and don’t have diabetes or heart disease, you can plug a handful of simple variables — things like age, cholesterol level and blood pressure — into a Framingham risk calculator and find out your chances of having serious heart trouble (a heart attack or coronary death) in the next 10 years.

Still, some 300,000 Americans die every year of sudden cardiac death outside the hospital, and many of those people don’t have classic risk factors for heart disease. Non-fatal heart attacks, too, remain difficult to predict for many patients.So there’s an understandable urge on the part of researchers to find new measures that will better predict who is at risk.

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Calcium Scan of Arteries Helps Spot Big Trouble - Forbes.com

(HealthDay News) -- Adding a scan for calcium in the heart arteries to a standard test of blood vessel function helps predict which people with known coronary disease are likely to develop serious problems, a new German study indicates. Read More

Medical News: Defibrillation Delay in Hospitals Mostly Unexplained - in Critical Care, General Critical Care from MedPage Today

Medical News: Defibrillation Delay in Hospitals Mostly Unexplained - in Critical Care, General Critical Care from MedPage Today

Race Plays Role In Diagnosis And Treatment - Kaiser Health News

CNN reports that African Americans and whites are treated differently by doctors. "While it's extremely difficult to tell in any given situation how much race -- consciously or unconsciously -- plays a role in a doctor's decision making, multiple studies over several decades have found doctors make different decisions for black patients and white patients even when they have the same medical problems and the same insurance." For example, "In a study conducted in 2007, Harvard researchers showed doctors a vignette about a 50-year-old man with chest pain who arrived at the emergency room, where an EKG showed he'd had a heart attack. Sometimes the researchers paired the medical history with a photo of black man and other times with a photo of a white man. The doctors were significantly more likely to recommend lifesaving drugs when they thought the patient was white than when they thought the patient was black" (Cohen, 7/23). In other news, "recently released statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that minority groups experience obesity at even greater levels than their white counterparts," The Milwaukee Health Examiner/Examiner reports. "According to the July 17 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, blacks have a 51 percent greater prevalence of obesity than whites. Hispanics also experience a greater percentage of obesity than whites with a 21 percent higher prevalence, according to the CDC publication." Read More

Cardiologists Plan to Cut Heart Failure Hospital Readmits by 20%

By Peggy Peck, Executive Editor, MedPage Today Published: March 28, 2009 Medicare spends $40 billion a year on hospital treatment for heart failure and a sizable chunk of that money is spent on readmissions.

A common reason is a failed hand-off from inpatient to community care, according the American College of Cardiology, which is launching an ambitious initiative to cut the Medicare heart failure readmission rate by 20% by December 2012.

Known as Hospital-to-Home, or H2H, the program is designed to save taxpayer dollars, improve patient care, and help realize the Obama administration's goal of cutting the Medicare readmissions.

But H2H is not confined to Medicare patients. Alfred Bove, M.D., Ph.D., president-elect of the ACC, said the program will target all systems and all patients.

Studies Try to Tease Apart the Links Between Depression and Heart Disease

By NICHOLAS BAKALAR - Published: December 16, 2008 - New York Times Three new studies have tried to explain the link between cardiovascular disease and depression and have arrived at subtly different conclusions.

CDC Proposed Project: Improving Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Programs

Over the next three years, DHDSP plans to conduct a series of information collections based on a reference set of questions that address relevance, quality and impact of DHDSP services and guidance. Respondents will be the DHDSP's partners in state and local government as well as organizations in the private sector. A generic clearance is requested in order to provide flexibility in the content and timing of specific information collections. Surveys tailored to specific public health partners, services, or other programmatic initiatives will be developed from the reference set of pre-approved questions. A small number of demographic and descriptive questions may be included in specific surveys to assess the extent to which perceptions and use of DHDSP services vary across types of respondents. The DHDSP also seeks approval to include a limited number of customized questions within each survey to ensure responsiveness to specific needs. The evaluation information will be used to determine whether DHDSP activities and products are reaching the intended audiences, whether they are deemed to be useful by those audiences, and whether DHDSP efforts improve public health practices. Finally, the generic clearance format will allow the DHDSP to identify new programmatic opportunities and to respond to partners' concerns.

Myth Busting: Heart Failure Issue

From BP Blogger - Cutting Through the Foggy Myths Using Best Practice Guidelines in Long Term Care Myth 1: Heart failure means your heart has stopped beating Myth 2: Heart failure is normal with aging Myth 3: Heart failure is tricky to recognize Myth 4: Can’t treat heart failure in LTC