Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a congenital heart disorder that affects nearly 1 in 500 people. It’s fairly common, and it can lead to several types of heart problems, including sudden death. It’s a disease of the heart muscle in which the walls of the lower chambers of the heart become too thick.
This thickening causes the muscle to malfunction, and the muscles can also become distorted, which often causes the aortic and mitral valves to stop regulating blood flow properly. HCM is caused by a type of genetic problem that makes the heart muscle grow improperly.
It’s passed as an autosomnal dominant trait in some families, meaning that when the gene is inherited from just one parent, the child will inherit the problem. Nearly half of people who have HCM get it through spontaneous mutation, and it isn’t inherited from either parent. Their parents wouldn’t necessarily be at risk for this condition, but their children might be. Read the rest of this entry »
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It has long been believed by the medical community that hormone replacement therapy for post-menopausal women might reduce their risk of developing coronary artery disease. There were three main points of evidence that seemed to support this idea.
The first thing was that the chance of developing heart disease rises dramatically in women after menopause. It’s been assumed that the reason for this is due to the sharp decline in hormone levels.
There were also about 30 clinical trials that seemed to show a benefit to the heart with HRT. Estrogen treatment undoubtedly increases HDL cholesterol and lowers LDL. Unfortunately, this belief was so strong that for a very long time, the only reason most people had to conduct clinical trials regarding the matter was simply to prove the benefits of HRT to the few doctors who still didn’t believe it should be prescribed. Read the rest of this entry »
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Robotic heart surgery is a type of minimally invasive heart surgery that’s performed by passing an endoscope through a very small incision. An endoscope is a small tube containing a type of camera.
The surgical instruments are also passed through the tube, or through another small incision. Then the surgeon uses the camera to view the heart and to see how to manipulate the instruments to perform the surgery.
This technique was developed as a way to minimize the trauma caused by cardiac surgery. Endoscopic surgery is commonly used for other types of surgery as well, like gallbladder surgery and knee surgery.
Endoscopic surgery is somewhat difficult to perform in more complex surgeries, because the instruments used are long and harder to use. Any small hand tremors would be exaggerated, so an extremely steady hand is required. Read the rest of this entry »
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