DETROIT - A team of doctors at Henry Ford Hospital is the first in the world to successfully repair a hole in the heart and open five blocked blood vessels in a complex, two-stage catheterization procedure.

The initial March 13 procedure used the Impella CP, a left ventricular assist device (VAD), to stabilize the patient and allowed the hole in the heart’s ventricle (lower chamber) to be closed. A VAD is a mechanical pump that helps move blood from the ventricles to the body. VADs are used in patients with weakened hearts or heart failure.

Retired plant engineer Joseph Mehal, 84, of Plymouth, hadn’t been feeling well for more than a week. He had no appetite and thought he might have the flu, but he had no chest pain or other classic symptoms to indicate a possible heart attack.

An emergency department physician diagnosed a heart attack, and Mehal was rushed to the cardiac catheterization lab.

The team was led by Drs. William O’Neill and Adam Greenbaum of the Center for Structural Heart Disease at Henry Ford Hospital.

“The Impella CP device was essential in allowing us to enter the heart and successfully close the defect, and it kept the patient alive while catheters were in his heart,” says Dr. Greenbaum.

Once the hole was closed, the patient returned to the cath lab 36 hours later and had complex stent therapy to open five blocked blood vessels.

“Closing the hole in the ventricle and high-risk angioplasty have been performed successfully before, but never together in one patient who was in cardiogenic shock,” says Dr. O’Neill.
Mehal is recuperating in the hospital and his doctors are optimistic that he will return to normal activity.

“My liver and kidneys were failing,” says Mehal. “Thanks to fast action and expertise, not only was my life saved, but my kidneys have recovered. My nephrologist said I was one day away from needing dialysis.”

Dr. O’Neill is an internationally recognized cardiologist, who was a pioneer in the use of angioplasty for treatment of heart attacks, now the primary therapy used throughout the world. He is the architect of non-invasive heart surgery, performing the first heart valve replacement through a catheter in North America in 2005.

A long list of his career accomplishments includes:

• First in the U.S. to use a heart-cooling procedure to reduce heart-attack damage. Lowering body temperature up to 9 degrees Fahrenheit through a chilled IV solution has shown promising results in protecting a patient from brain damage after a heart stops.

• First in the U.S. to use stem-cell therapy for heart repair.

• First in U.S. to implant donor vein stents through a catheter to repair leaking arteries.

• The only successful triple heart valve repair through a catheter in pregnancy, allowing the pregnancy to continue, which open-heart surgery would not.

“Approximately one quarter of American adults has some type of structural heart defect,” says Dr. O’Neill. “Treating structural heart disease with catheter-based techniques and less-invasive surgeries is the next frontier in cardiology.”

For more information on the Center for Structural Heart Disease at Henry Ford Hospital, click here.

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There are certain foods that damage your teeth. While nobody looks forward to a dentist appointment, the slight discomfort from a routine exam or cleaning is nothing compared to the pain (not to mention the expense) of procedures such as fillings and root canals. Wouldn’t it be nice to just not have to deal with any of it? Well, there is a way you can, and it calls for strategic eating. What you eat or don’t eat can greatly lower your chances of needing dental work. There are plenty of foods that people should be avoiding if they want to keep their teeth in good shape. Following are the top 5 foods that dentists try not to have in their kitchen—and how they prevent food-related tooth damage whenever “bad foods” do manage to make it past their lips.

Read more at http://blackdoctor.org/16360/foods-that-damage-your-teeth/2/

There are many benefits to finding ways to reverse type 2 diabetes. A big one is its expense. According to the American Diabetes Association, the combined cost of medical care and lost productivity due to diabetes in the United States exceeded $174 billion in 2007.

People with diabetes pay 2.3 times as much for health care as non-diabetics, and $1 in every $10 spent for health care is attributable to diabetes.

Sadly, even though type 2 diabetes was once considered an adult disease, so many children now receive this diagnosis that it is no longer referred to as adult onset.

Recent guidelines from the American Diabetes Association advise that some new patients try healthy eating and exercise before they begin medication. Now, the latest science reveals that fine-tuning many long-held health habits may lead to even better results.

1. Eat fruits and vegetables. They can reduce your diabetes risk and protect your heart. In a new study, people who ate at least 12 types each week had a lower diabetes risk than those who ate a less diverse mix—regardless of overall quantity. Mix arugula with your romaine, snack on fruit salad, pile new veggies onto your sandwich.

2. Lose weight—even just a little—for better blood sugar control. Don’t worry if it’s taking a while to slim down. In a 2012 review paper, Sheri Colberg-Ochs, PhD, noted that exercise alone improved the ability of previously sedentary, middle-aged adults to metabolize sugars, regardless of whether they lost any weight. Their total cholesterol dropped too.

3. Get enough hours of sleep. Research links too little shut-eye to increased diabetes risk. Make it a good night’s sleep—sleep quality may matter as much to your health as the number of hours of slumber you log. Research shows that poor sleep affects your body’s ability to properly metabolize sugar and disrupts the hormones that regulate your appetite, which can lead to weight gain and increase your diabetes risk.

4. Skip the rice. White rice may be a popular diet staple, but that doesn’t make it nutritious. A recent Harvard study found the greater a person’s white rice intake, the higher his or her risk for developing type 2 diabetes. Compared with its brown rice counterpart, white rice has lower levels of fiber, magnesium, and vitamins. In addition, white rice is considered a high glycemic food, which means it’s digested quickly and can lead to blood sugar spikes.

When you go to the grocery store to do some major food shopping, how long is it before you find yourself having to go back to do it all again? It’s tough when you can’t seem to make stuff last as long as you would like. But I’ve found some great ways of stretching our groceries so that I can make the next shopping trip go a little bit further into the future.

Avoid snacks-Avoiding snacks has its (obvious) advantages. Firstly, this means you end up spending less on your food budget as junk food and various snacks (and processed foods) tend to be costly; and secondly, there’s the positive effect this has on one’s weight and health.

Use leftovers creatively-If you’ve got a creative eye or a fertile imagination, you can do quite a bit with leftovers. For instance, I tend not to think of cooking for a single meal. Instead, I will think about how I can make the most out of everything I am cooking so I have something for the future as well. A classic example would involve cooking a chicken for a Sunday roast. Even if I know that virtually the whole chicken will be consumed, I will still strip off a few slices so I can make a single chicken pie for myself later in the week. Once I began thinking along these lines, I was constantly coming up with new and interesting ways to make meals go further, pretty much every time.

Use Coupons- The Sunday newspaper is usually the best source but also look on line, at public libraries and at coupon swap boxes at the store itself. Some stores issue coupons at checkout for use on your next trip. Be sure and note expiration dates and if a cash value is offered. Don’t let them expire and go to waste.

Plan Your Meal- Planning is a great way to create a grocery list, and not end up with a bunch of items from the grocery store that you don’t really need at the time.