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What You Should Know
For 50% of Americans the very first symptom of heart disease will be
either sudden death or a full heart attack and nearly half of first
heart attack patients will die from that event. Despite all of the
recent scientific advances, your doctor’s approach to accurately
predict risk for heart attack may be outdated and leave you
vulnerable.
Heart attack prevention efforts have
not been successful to date. Relying on risk factors to predict
heart attacks such as family history, high blood pressure, obesity,
and even cholesterol, are not enough. Millions of dollars are spent
promoting the importance of cholesterol to prevent heart attacks.
While maintaining a healthy cholesterol level is important, having a
normal cholesterol score does not mean you are not at risk for a
heart attack!
New noninvasive screening tests allow
doctors to look inside your arteries for blockages that cause heart
attacks. These images are acquired from outside the body in minutes
and may save your life!
Ask your doctor if you need to be screened for atherosclerosis.
Learn about Coronary Calcium Scoring or Carotid IMT Testing, or
click on the link to find a SHAPE Certified Medical Provider in your
area who fully understands and offers these lifesaving tests.
What is Atherosclerosis?
It is the major cause of heart attacks, some strokes, aneurysms, and
peripheral artery disease.
Our arteries are much more than simple tubes. They are a well
organized system that supplies the organs and tissues of the body
with the blood they need to extract sufficient amounts of nutrients
and oxygen.
Arteries also regulate blood flow and
pressure through a complicated system of hormones and flow-sensitive
receptors. They work as a first alarm system for local infections
and injury, as well as regulate the subsequent repair process.
In the best of all worlds, the artery would manage these challenges
quite well, keeping its wall thin and elastic. However, with the
conditions facing the artery wall in most of us today, with a
continuous exposure to high levels of potentially toxic lipids and
other factors, fulfilling these tasks may come with a high price:
the development of inflammation, scarring and disruption of the
inner layer of the artery. This disease is called atherosclerosis
and makes the artery wall thickened, stiff and fragile.
Why Screening?
Because heart attack does not warn and strikes fast! Every year, in
over 200,000 people, the first sign of heart disease is a sudden
cardiac death which happens within 1-60 minutes from the onset of
symptoms.
Are you a Vulnerable Patient?
Each year close to 1.4 million people in the United States
experience a heart attack, and in excess of 500,000 die from it.
Worldwide, over 19 million people die from a heart attack each
year.Amazingly, 50 to 70% of those individuals who died from a heart
attack were not aware of their risk.
Definition of a vulnerable patient: Individuals who are at risk of a
near term future heart attack are called vulnerable patients. One
way of characterizing this population is to define those with a 5%
or more risk of a heart attack in one year. In other words, in 10
years one out of two vulnerable patients will definitely experience
a heart attack.
By default, anyone with a history of prior heart attack is
considered a vulnerable patient. SHAPE’s emphasis on identification
of the vulnerable patient is for the asymptomatic population
(apparently healthy people).
A single test to precisely identify a vulnerable patient remains to
be discovered .However, the SHAPE Guideline illustrates the path to
detect and treat the vulnerable population.
How can I get
tested?
You can get tested
to better gauge your risk for heart attack or stroke by contacting a
qualified physician. Those doctors trained and certified in the
early detection of cardiovascular disease and heart attack
prevention through the SHAPE Society are listed
here
by state.
If there are no doctors listed in your city or state please
email us for a referral to a qualified physician or medical
center to best determine your risk for heart attack.
YES, Heart
Attacks Can Be Eradicated!
The heart
attack epidemic inherited from the 20th century (over 15 million
heart attacks every year), makes it difficult for most people to
imagine a future in which heart attacks are no longer a threat.
Nonetheless, the mission of eradicating heart attacks is no more
challenging than the mission of landing humans on Mars. The vision
for a heart attack-free future can become a reality in the 21st
century and can result in a major increase in human life expectancy
and socioeconomic development, if the medical community, including
academia, industry, and healthcare policymakers, shifts its
investment from the treatment of events that have already occurred
to prevention of the first event. The illustration below shows our
visionary path to arrest the worldwide epidemic of atherosclerosis
related mortality and morbidity, particularly heart attacks.
A heart healthy life style assisted by innovative preventive
technologies and personalized medicine will be able to shift the
existing in-hospital expensive sick care to the future
out-of-hospital inexpensive health care.
1. Era of
Screening - Searching for and saving the vulnerable patient:
as presented in the SHAPE Task Force report, the SHAPE initiative
presents the best available strategy to advance the ongoing fight
against ACVD, primarily heart attack and stroke.
2. Era of "PolyPill" - Mass prophylactic therapy of at-risk
population: A future with universal prophylactic therapy for the
prevention of ACVD, using a cocktail of effective, safe, and
inexpensive drugs (packaged compactly) to assure maximum compliance,
is on the horizon. Although such a future is most desirable, there
are major scientific and regulatory roadblocks that will require
time and further investigations. Pending resolution of these issues,
the SHAPE strategy remains the best strategy.
3. Era of Vaccine - Primary prevention through immune modulation
and vaccination strategies: Vaccination and immune modulation
strategies for prevention, regression and stabilization of
atherosclerosis present a most exciting possibility. Atherosclerosis
bears many similarities to chronic inflammatory/autoimmune diseases
such as rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease. Compelling
data from experimental models show that such diseases may be
challenged by vaccination and immune modulation strategies. Will it
be possible to attack ACVD with the same approach? Several studies
have shown positive effects of immunization with antigenic LDL
preparations. Such ground-breaking approaches may become the panacea
for the world's growing epidemic of heart disease.
Conclusion: Heart attacks can be eradicated in the 21st
century if the medical community, including academia, industry, and
healthcare policymakers, shifts its investment from the treatment of
events that have already occurred to prevention of the first event,
i.e. “lock the barn door before the horse is stolen”.
Dr. Morteza Naghavi, the founder and
president of SHAPE, teaches healthcare professionals elements of the
SHAPE guidelines for heart attack prevention. See the preview of Dr
Naghavi's book on Amazon.
You should also know that heart
attack often does not happen like the way it is portrayed on TVs by
Hollywood.
Click
here to find out more. |
