The Mended Hearts, Inc.
Hearts of Jersey Chapter #179

July 2010

Health Items from Pages

Hypothermia for cardiac arrest patients

When the heart stops beating, oxygen-rich blood is no longer pumped to the brain, causing damage or death to brain cells. Doctors know that the rapid return of blood to the brain after resuscitation has the potential for causing additional brain damage.

Now, cardiac arrest patients whose hearts are being restarted are candidates for hypothermia therapy, which cools the patient to about 90 degrees. Emergency medical physicians at the University of Alabama induce hypothermia in those patients. They are kept in a hypothermic state for 24 hours after resuscitation, then they are slowly warmed to normal temperatures over two to three days.

Take me home

The treatment was used on a man in Concord Hospital near Pittsfield, New Hampshire. His heart had stopped seven times, but his doctors cooled his body to 92 degrees for a day after his heart surgery. Contrary to most predictions, he was able to return to his family a short time later, walking, talking and driving.

Dr. Kenneth Deloge, who helped bring the treatment to Concord, says, “Restoring the heart is easy. Restoring the brain is hard.”

Who is this?

At Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, a 34-year-old woman was about to deliver a baby when her heart stopped. Her son was born by C-section as doctors worked for 43 minutes to restart her heart.

With little hope of a favorable outcome, doctors cooled her body to 91 degrees for 24 hours, then gently rewarmed her for 12 hours. Without knowing what happened, she woke up, asked the nurse for a telephone and called her husband. He answered and ask who was calling.

He and relatives were in the waiting room deciding who would bring up the baby after his mother died.

* About 500 of the 5,000 hospitals in the United States offer hypothermia therapy, says the American Heart Association.

Aspirin, the pennies-a-day miracle drug,

and why it might not be right for you

It was about 2,500 years ago that Hippocrates was treating headaches, pain and fever with a special concoction. It was a powder made from the bark and leaves of the willow tree.

By 1829, scientists discovered the compound in willows that gave pain relief and called it salicin. Salicin was later developed into the usable form we have today ... Aspirin.

It works by blocking the prostaglandins, chemicals that sensitize nerve endings to pain. Aspirin also reduces the ability of platelets in the blood to stick together and create blood clots.

* The heart saver: By reducing the formation of blood clots, aspirin reduces the risk of a heart attack or stroke.

If more people in the United States who are at risk for a heart attack would take low-dose aspirin every day, there could be up to 45,000 fewer heart attack deaths each year, according to researchers at Stanford University.

* Aspirin is not for everyone. To an adult who has not had heart problems, popping a baby aspirin every day might seem like an inexpensive way to protect health. But it’s not that simple.

Cardiologists at New York University say the effect of aspirin should be judged against a higher risk of bleeding, including bleeding in the brain and in the stomach.

The American Medical Association now suggests that older people with no clinical cardiovascular disease, including those diagnosed correctly or incorrectly with peripheral artery disease (PAD), might not gain any protection from a daily aspirin.

* Aspirin does work very well in helping to prevent a second heart attack or a second ischemic stroke. Cardiologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill say it definitely helps.

The low-dose aspirin is also good protection for a patient who has received a stent or had bypass surgery.