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Tag: heart attack
Women Often Dismiss Signs of Heart Disease

Women Often Dismiss Signs of Heart Disease

Nobody wants to find out they have heart disease, but according to a new study women are more likely than men to ignore the danger signs and delay essential care. And the later treatment is started, the fewer the options.

The findings, published in a press release from the Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver found men who developed symptoms such as angina (a type of chest pain caused by reduced blood flow to the heart) sought treatment sooner, rather than ignoring or denying them or dismissing them as unimportant. Women on the other hand were more likely to assume that the symptoms would go away or get better on their own.

In addition to dismissing obvious warning signs such as chest pain, pain in the arm, or shortness of breath, both men and women may not be aware that there are many atypical signs of heart disease such as nausea, sweating, jaw pain, or any pain that is unusual. But women may experience and describe pain differently than men.

The press release also referred to earlier studies that show women were more concerned about the economic impact being out of commission would cause, and less concerned about the most effective treatments.

Photo: James Palinsad via Flickr

Just Heartbreaking

Just Heartbreaking

The BBC, citing a study in JAMA’s Internal Medicine, speculates on whether one can die of a broken heart.

“The study found that, while it happened rarely, the number of people who had a heart attack or a stroke in the month after a loved-one died was double that of a matched control group who were not grieving (50 out of 30,447 in the bereaved group, or 0.16 percent, compared with 67 out of 83,588 in the non-bereaved group, or 0.08 percent).

One of the authors, Dr Sunil Shah of St George’s at the University of London, told the BBC: “We often use the term a ‘broken heart’ to signify the pain of losing a loved-one and our study shows that bereavement can have a direct effect on the health of the heart.”

Photo: Olivier Kaderli via Flickr

Man’s Execution Goes Awry In Oklahoma

Man’s Execution Goes Awry In Oklahoma

By Matt Pearce, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Paresh Dave, Los Angeles Times

A controversial double execution in Oklahoma was called off Tuesday night after the first inmate to receive an experimental three-drug cocktail writhed and grimaced on the gurney, struggled to lift his head and died of a heart attack more than 40 minutes later, officials and witnesses said.

Clayton Lockett’s botched death occurred after a constitutional showdown over Oklahoma’s execution secrecy laws. It is likely to provoke strong criticism from death penalty opponents at a time when similar policies on lethal injections have come under attack.

The incident will have a huge effect, said Deborah W. Denno, a professor at Fordham University School of Law and a death penalty expert. “The entire world was watching this execution.”

According to reporters at the scene, Lockett, 38, received the first dose of the three-drug cocktail at 6:23 p.m. The drugs included midazolam, which causes unconsciousness; vecuronium bromide, which stops respiration; and potassium chloride, which stops the heart. They are administered in that order. The state has said the procedure is meant to involve three doctors with hand-held syringes, injecting the drugs into IV lines in both arms.

At 6:33 p.m., 10 minutes after the injections, a doctor said Lockett was unconscious. But three minutes later, he began to nod and mumble and writhe, witnesses said.

The following account of Lockett’s death was tweeted after the fact by Associated Press and Tulsa World reporters at the execution.

He was conscious and blinking, licking his lips even after the process began. He then began to seize. — Bailey Elise McBride

Prison officials said they will try to get Lockett to hospital to resuscitate him. — Bailey Elise McBride

Clayton Lockett died inside the execution chamber at 7:06 pm of a massive heart attack according to DOC officials. — Cary Aspinwall

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections confirmed that Lockett did not die immediately. Director Robert Patton “did say that it appears that a vein (of Lockett’s) blew up or exploded, it collapsed, and the drugs were not getting into the system like they were supposed to,” spokesman Jerry Massie said.

The condemned man “was obviously showing some movement” after the injection, Massie said.

“After several minutes, five minutes, he was not unconscious,” he said. “They made a decision to halt the execution, but at 7:06 he suffered a massive heart attack and expired.”

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin had strongly pushed for Tuesday night’s double execution. In a statement, she acknowledged the botched death and ordered a two-week delay in the execution of Charles F. Warner, who was to die after Lockett.

“I have asked the Department of Corrections to conduct a full review of Oklahoma’s execution procedures to determine what happened and why during this evening’s execution of Clayton Derrell Lockett,” Fallin said.

Lockett was convicted of murdering a woman in 1999. Warner was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s infant daughter in 1997.

One of Lockett’s attorneys, Dean Sanderford, witnessed the execution from the same room as the reporters. Lockett’s movements started as twitching and ended like a seizure, he said. “What we saw is somebody coming back to consciousness.”

Then the blinds went down and the microphone in the death chamber was turned off.

“Exactly what we were worried about happened,” he said. “He died in pain.”

Warner’s attorney, Madeline Cohen, called Lockett’s death “horrible and certainly something we hope and pray will never happen.”

“Our feeling right now is that until there is a full investigation, including an independent autopsy and full transparency about the drugs, Oklahoma should not be executing anybody else,” said Cohen, who was not in the observation room. “We will take all possible legal steps to get some light on this process.”

News of the botched execution prompted a storm of criticism. Many blamed recalcitrant Oklahoma officials for pursuing an experimental and secretive lethal injection method, and some blamed the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to weigh in on similar execution secrecy cases in other states.

“This is one of the worst botches that we’ve had,” said Denno, the Fordham law professor. “All of this was predictable and foreseeable. How many times does this have to take place? … We have all the evidence we need to show this is a highly problematic and potentially unconstitutional procedure.”

The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma likened the execution process to “hastily thrown-together human science experiments” and called for a moratorium.

A spokesman for Oklahoma Attorney General E. Scott Pruitt issued a terse statement: “We are gathering information on what happened tonight in order to evaluate.”

Texas, the state that performs the most executions, said the Oklahoma incident would not prompt any changes there. “Texas does not use the same drugs,” a Department of Corrections spokesman said. “We use a single lethal dose of pentobarbital and we have done so since 2012.”

The Oklahoma incident could eventually force the U.S. Supreme Court to reconsider whether the death penalty constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is barred by the U.S. Constitution.

Six years ago, the Supreme Court rejected a cruel and unusual punishment challenge to lethal injections in a Kentucky case. Attorneys argued that prison officials could not be trusted to administer the three drugs in a way that would ensure that a prisoner was put to death without suffering great pain.

The Supreme Court ruled that states could proceed with lethal injections as long as they developed good and safe procedures to administer the drugs. But the court left the door open to future challenges.

The Oklahoma case is sure to be cited as evidence that state prison authorities cannot be trusted to capably administer lethal injections.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law, said as much in a statement Tuesday night: “For the state to inflict such great suffering is the very definition of cruel and unusual punishment. Courts must step in and prevent executions with such untested protocols that have the potential for inflicting such terrible suffering.”

Photo: Ken Piorkowski via Flickr

Potential For Heart Attack, Stroke Risk Seen With Marijuana Use

Potential For Heart Attack, Stroke Risk Seen With Marijuana Use

By Melissa Healy, Los Angeles Times

Over a five-year period, a government-mandated tracking system in France showed that physicians in that country treated 1,979 patients for serious health problems associated with the use of marijuana, and nearly 2 percent of those encounters were with patients suffering from cardiovascular problems, including heart attack, cardiac arrhythmia and stroke, and circulation problems in the arms and legs. In roughly a quarter of those cases, the study found, the patient died.

In the United States, when young and otherwise healthy patients show up in emergency departments with symptoms of heart attack, stroke, cardiomyopathy and cardiac arrhythmia, physicians have frequently noted in case reports that these unusual patients are regular marijuana users.

Such reporting is hardly the basis for declaring marijuana use an outright cause of cardiovascular disease. But on Wednesday, cardiologists writing in the Journal of the American Heart Association warned that “clinical evidence … suggests the potential for serious cardiovascular risks associated with marijuana use.” And with a growing movement to decriminalize marijuana use, they called for data-collection efforts capable of detecting and measuring marijuana’s cardiovascular impact among American users of cannibis setiva.

“There is now compelling evidence on the growing risk of marijuana-associated adverse cardiovascular effects, especially in young people,” said Emilie Jouanjus, lead author of the French study, which was also published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. That evidence, Jouanjus added, should prompt cardiologists to consider marijuana use a potential cause of cardiovascular disease in patients they see.

In an editorial published Wednesday in the AHA journal, Drs. Sherief Rezkalla and Robert A. Kloner asked, “Do we really know enough about the cardiovascular effects of marijuana to feel comfortable about its use in patients with known cardiovascular disease or patients with cardiovascular risk factors,” including obesity, sedentary behavior, high blood pressure and worrisome cholesterol numbers.

Rezkalla and Kloner combed the recent medical literature for animal experiments, observational studies and case reports linking marijuana use in close temporal proximity with cardiovascular events. They cited evidence that marijuana use probably increases clotting factors in the blood and that heavy marijuana use may lead to significant changes in the tiny vessels carrying blood to the heart and brain, such that even after clearance of a major blockage, blood flow remains impeded.

Aside from heart attacks and strokes, case studies linked recent marijuana use in patients seeking care for increased angina, ischemic ulcers and gangrene associated with blocked blood flow to extremities and transient ischemic attacks, sometimes called “mini-strokes.” Notably these complaints often came from patients who were young and had no previous evidence of cardiovascular disease.

“We think the time has come to stop and think about what is the best way to protect our communities from the potential danger of widespread marijuana use in the absence of safety studies,” added Rezkalla, a cardiologist at the Marshfield Clinic in Wisconsin, and Kloner, a cardiologist at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine. “It is the responsibility of the medical community to determine the safety of the drug before it is widely legalized for recreational use.”

AFP Photo/Desiree Martin