4 heart attacks in 5 years and 8 stents: My patient is now fit; his biggest lesson wasn’t about surgery | Health and Wellness News
When this corporate executive suffered his first heart attack at 50, he assumed the worst was behind him. The attack was relatively mild, with a blocked coronary artery. Doctors moved quickly, opening the narrowed vessel and implanting a stent to restore blood flow. Like many patients, he believed that once the blocked artery was fixed, normal life could resume. Instead, the next five years became an education in the stubborn nature of heart disease. He experienced three new blocks in different arteries and at the end of it all, he had eight or nine stents. But he made aggressive changes in his lifestyle that has kept him intervention-free so far. And that brings to the most fundamental misunderstanding about heart disease itself. You have to keep working towards heart health continuously, not just hope one intervention will work for the rest of your life. More than a plumbing problem For decades, heart disease was often explained as a simple blockage problem: an artery narrows, blood flow is restricted, a heart attack occurs and the blockage …
