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Sunday, January 19, 2003The stereotypical heart attack patient is no longer a man in his 50's who suddenly falls dead. "That death rate is so low now that we're no longer able to track it," said Dr. Teri Manolio, director of the epidemiology and biometry programs at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "It's almost gone." The reporter tries to link the decline in mortality to our preventive efforts - our use of statins to lower cholesterol, the decline in smoking rates, but as one of the doctors interviewed points out, it's the treatment of heart disease that has improved markedly in the past thirty years: "When I look back 25 years ago to when I was a cardiology fellow, many of the things we did were not proven and many are now proven to be wrong," Dr. Goldman said. "Our treatment for heart attacks was bed rest. We put them to bed and we watched them." Now, doctors give drugs to heart attack patients to dissolve blood clots, opening blocked arteries. They operate, with much better surgical results. They pry open clogged blood vessels with balloon angioplasty and stents, the wire tubes to keep them open. Recently, device makers developed implantable defibrillators that can shock a fluttering heart into beating steadily, preventing death in patients with damaged hearts. And in fact, the graphic that accompanies the article shows the steepest decline in morality in the 1980's, a decade that saw vast improvements in cardiology techniques. The widespread, and aggressive, use of statins didn't catch on until the 1990's. While we're on the subject of statins, there was this little nugget of information in the article: Tens of millions of Americans are taking them. In the 12 months ended in September 2002, there were 116 million dispensed prescriptions of statins — new prescriptions and refills — in the United States, according to IMS Health, a health information company. 116 million dispensed prescriptions for drugs that can cost anywhere from $31 per month (the lowest dose generic) to $120 per month (the highest dose of the most expensive). Not to mention the $20 to $100 lab fee to have blood work done every six months to monitor side effects, or more frequently if the drug dosage has to be changed. And we wonder why healthcare costs are so high, and why insurance companies are reluctant to cover drugs. posted by Sydney on 1/19/2003 03:03:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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