Q: My daughter is 28 and told she is in excellent health but recently has had episodes of very rapid heart beat over 100. F or about 6 weeks her heart is pounding so hard she is unable to sleep. Her blood pressure is low not high , she claims her left arm aches and her fingers feel tinglely.EKG normal …
My EKG shows an MI. Should I have more tests
Q: Dear Sir, Extremely sorry to bother you. I am 33 years old.I had an EKG that said Normal Sinus Rhythm, Septal Infarction and heart rate 103 bpm. I was sufering from severe physical and mental stress for almost a week before the EKG. I had a very mild chest pain in the extreme left side of breast which was …
SYNTAX and Bypass Surgery
Lessons learned from the SYNTAX trial after two years, the first surgical analysis paper of the SYNTAX trial has proven what I have blogged about on numerous previous occasions. The excellent results of 1% mortality, irrespective of the assigned SYNTAX Risk Score, compares VERY favorably with PCI. At two years better than expected outcomes have continued. As the EACTS 2010 …
My dad continues to have chest pain after stress test
Q: my father is hypertensive and 40 years old.the other day he suddenly got high bp and was taken to ER.the bp was fluctuating too much but got under control.the very next day the doctor performed stress test which didnot involve exercise.it and other cardiac tests like echo came out to be perfectly fine,but after he got back home he …
Doctor is sending me for an echo to look for pulmonary hypertension
Q: I am a 26 yr old male. 5ft 8in tall and 218lbs. I have done one Anabolic steroid cycle with testosterone early in 2009. I also have a history of Anxiety and Hypochondria. I was hospitalized as a result of my steroid use. The ER doctor admitted me because my CPK-MM was elevated and I had severe Tachycardia. I …
Reducing Your Health Care Costs
To Kristen Mack, The Chicago Tribune, December 20, 2010 (The Chicago Tribune today released a Rahm Emanuel statement in which he promises to reduce City workers’ health care costs by $500M, or 20%, with “… just 4 percent of the city’s workforce accounting for roughly 65 percent of the city’s health care costs…”) While I applaud this incentive, to make …
Iron deficiency anemia and clumping Platelets
QUESTION: Iron deficiency anemia can cause a high platelet count but can it also cause platelets to clump? My Lab work said my platelets were clumped on my blood smear but appeared to be increased in number so a manual differential in 8 weeks. This is the second sample in two months to show clumping.
Rahm Emanuel and reducing health care costs.
Rahm Emanuel said today city workers should take better care of themselves — with City Hall’s help — as one way to save taxpayers money by reducing health care costs. In 2011, Chicago taxpayers will spend nearly $500 million on health care costs for city employees, their families and retirees, Emanuel said. If elected mayor, he said he is committed …
Statins may improve your cholesterol but not your cardiac risks
Question: Do Statins really improve the risk of coronary artery disease? Answer: A paper published in this issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, reviewed the association of statin therapy and cardiovascular outcomes, but found little difference between treated and untreated patients. As the current focus of statin therapy is to reduce low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), rather than increase high-density lipoprotein …
Low HDL and Cardiovascular Risk
Current national guidelines for CVD risk reduction are primarily focused on strategies to reduce levels of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), with the most recent focus being on “lower is better” rather than an effort to increase high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C). A careful examination of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) using statins demonstrates that even with intensive statin therapy and intensive LDL-C …