from American College of Cardiology's Scientific Sessions
The health care community has improved
treatments for heart disease, but we haven’t
been doing our part in preventing it. As a
result patients with the most severe type of
heart attack have become younger, more
obese and more likely to have preventable
risks, such as smoking, high blood pressure,
diabetes and chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease—COPD. Researchers at the
Cleveland Clinic reported to the American
College of Cardiology’s Scientific Sessions
that the average age of patients with total
blockage of a main artery went from sixtyfour
to sixty over a period of twenty years.
Obesity went from thirty-one to forty
percent, but most striking was that smoking
in this group of heart attack patients jumped
from twenty-eight to forty-six percent.