Heart problems & a way to detect them early

[Melbourne-Girl]

I hope that it is ok to share this on the Lupus site. There will be people from the other 2 sites that would also benefit from the knowledge.

There are many people who either have heart problems or they have a family history of severe heart problems even at an early age and even if the person is on a wonderful healthy diet and exercises daily. They may be prime targets for a heart attack which may be fatal.

Many of the heart medications have improved over time and another really positive things is that they have A.E.D’s in most public venues in Australia now (including Drs surgeries). These are small fool proof defibrillators that tell an ordinary person on the street what to do if it looks like the patient may suddenly be very sick and suffering arterial fibrillation or it looks like some heart problem. It tells you where to place the probes, how far away you should stand and when to press the defibrillator button. If a patient is not experiencing arterial fibrillation this device wont work on them. Call your countries emergency number and get them taken to emergency ASAP so their heart condition can be assessed & monitored.

Before it reaches this grim stage there is a machine that AtCor Medical makes which can give you a far more accurate reading than the old sphygmomanometers which were wonderful for just over 100 years. There is newer technology now where you don’t have to go to hospital to have a test. If you are interested your Dr would have to refer you to a Specialist who has one of these machines. It is a small portable device that is not painful. A probe called a tonometer is placed on the patients radial artery and it gives you an arterial blood pressure reading as if straight from the atrium. It compares your results to healthy Males/Females of the same age group as you. The reading can be up to 50mmols different to an ordinary blood pressure reading but if your reading is not within the range of normal you can then have arterial stiffness indexes done which will tell you how much plaque and fat you have lining your arteries when compared to a healthy person of the same age & sex. This can be done in a Drs office or at a University and is still the same machine taking different measurements. None of it is painful & the machine is very portable. You used to & often still do have to have such tests in intensive care or coronary care through invasive procedures.

The good thing about the Sphygmocor (which was invented some years ago by an eminent Cardiologist in Sydney) is that if you have some blockage or fat showing in your arteries Specialists can begin treating you so that they can also monitor you closely and you won’t get to the bypass or fibrillation stage.

It would be very beneficial for patients with a family history of serious heart conditions or even patients with heart conditions without having to go to hospital and get the same results invasively.

It is used extensively in Australian Universities by Researchers and by switched on Cardiologists and even more so by Nephrologists who spend so much time and energy keeping their renal patients kidneys in as healthy a state as possible only to lose around 80% of these poor patients through cardiac disease.

My hope is that this information will help some of you lovely people out there who already have a enough health issues to deal with. Let’s make life a little easier for you when we can.

If you can look it up on the internet so you can find out more about it,

Best wishes always,

M-G xxx

🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀🍀

[Melbourne-Girl]

My post above mentions arterial twice, it may be pedantic but it is meant to read Atrial both times not Arterial.