Coronary artery disease, number one killer In men and women, it involves blockages in the blood vessels that supply the heart muscle. As discussed in my video. Do cardiac stent angioplasty procedures work?low blood flow can cause a type of chest pain called angina pectoris or, if severe enough, a heart attack. Plant-based diets and lifestyle programs have been shown to help reverse these blocks treating the cause of why our arteries become clogged in the first place. But, for those who cannot or do not want to change their diet, there are medications that can help, as well as more invasive surgical treatments.
What is a cardiac stent?
You may have heard of open heart surgeryperformed to try to avoid blocking, or percutaneous coronary intervention. As discussed in my video. Why cardiac stents in angioplasty don’t work betterHistorically, the most common procedure was angioplasty, in which a small balloon is inserted into a narrow coronary artery that feeds the heart to force it to open wider and improve blood flow. So, stents it became fashionable. Instead of simply inflating the artery, how about permanently inserting a metal mesh tube to keep the artery open? Stents are usually inserted in the groin and threaded all the way to the heart, and while stents used to be mostly bare metal, there are now sleek new ones. drug eluting stents They not only force the arteries open, but also slowly release pharmaceuticals.
How serious is stent placement?
The surgical procedure carries risks, including death. In an emergency situation, while you are having a heart attack, angioplasty can save your life, but hundreds of thousands of these procedures are for stable coronary artery disease, for which there appears to be little or no no benefits. As discussed in my video. The risks of cardiac stentsdoctors seem to be killing or infecting thousands of people a year in vain, and that’s not even counting the tens of thousands of silent mini knocks caused by these procedures that can contribute to cognitive decline. In fact, between 11 and 17 percent of people who undergo angioplasty or stent placement come away with new brain lesions (up to one in six patients).
Do stents work?
Angioplasty and stents for non-emergency coronary artery disease are among the most common invasive procedures made in the United States. Millions of people have gotten stents for stable coronary artery disease, but it now appears that for these patients, angioplasty and stenting don’t actually prevent heart attacks, don’t offer long-term angina pain relief, and does not improve survival. Because? Because the most dangerous plaques (the ones most vulnerable to rupturing and causing a heart attack) are not the ones doctors put stents in in. Often they are not even the ones that obstruct blood flow on an angiogram.
In fact, in 2007 we learned from the COURAGE essay that angioplasty and stents do not reduce the risk of death or heart attack, but patients did not seem to understand the note. As discussed in my video. Why are stents still used if they don’t work?, only 1 percent realize there was no benefit in mortality or heart attack, perhaps because most cardiologists It didn’t occur to me to mention that fact. One can imagine that if patients truly understood that all they were getting was symptomatic relief, they would be less likely to go under the knife. Ten years later, the ORBITA trial was published, which even showed promise of symptom relief. it was an illusion.
Are stents really necessary?
The implications are profound and far-reaching. First of all, the results. showed unequivocally that there are no benefits to non-emergency angioplasty and stents for stable heart disease. Basically, patients would be at risk of harm from no benefitso it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which a fully informed patient would choose an invasive procedure for nothing.
However, angioplasty and stenting are still frequently performed in patients with non-emergency coronary artery disease, despite clear evidence that it provides minimal benefit, as discussed in my video. Risks Versus Benefits of Angioplasty Cardiac Stent. For example, it does not prevent heart attacks or death, but as many as nine out of ten patients mistakenly believed that the procedure would reduce his chances of having a heart attack.
What are the side effects of cardiac stents?
Stent placement and the blood-thinning medications you must take after surgery can cause complications, including heart failure, stroke and death. The risks are relatively low; There is less than a 1 percent chance that it will kill or stroke you. The 15 percent risk of having a heart attack occurs only if the stent becomes blocked at a later date, which only happens about 1 percent of the time in the short term. There is a 13 percent risk of kidney injury, due to the dyes that must be injected, but usually heal on their own. More serious complications, including death, only occur in about 1 in 150 cases. However, you have to multiply that by the fact that hundreds of thousands of these procedures are performed every year.
And, again, although stents appeared to offer immediate relief from angina chest pain in stable patients with coronary artery disease, they did not. do not offer long-term angina pain relief and them he didn’t actually translate at a lower risk of heart attack or death. More about this in my video. Do heart stent procedures work for chest pain with angina?.
Diet after a heart attack and stents
Should we be surprised That angioplasty and stents do not improve the prognosis? After all, neither does anything to modify the underlying disease process itself. In other words, they don’t treat the cause. As discussed in my video. Cardiac Stents and Coding: How Cardiologists Game the SystemEven if stents helped with symptoms beyond the placebo effect, they would still be be treating the symptomsnot the disease, so it is not surprising that the disease continues to progress until the patient is incapacitated until death.
Fortunately, we are on the cusp of a seismic revolution in health: not another pill, procedure or operation, but, instead, treating the underlying cause of heart disease with whole foods and plant-based nutrition, most powerful tool medicine has ever had in your toolbox.
Heart healthy eating
The most likely reason most of our loved ones will die is heart disease. Atherosclerosis or hardening of the arteries. starts in childhood, as discussed in my video How not to die from heart disease. The arteries of almost all children raised on the standard American diet already have fatty streaks that mark the first stage of the disease, when they are ten years old. After that, the plates begin. forming at 20, it gets worse at 30 and then it can start to kill us. In our hearts, it is called a heart attack; in our brain, it can manifest as a stroke. So, for anyone over the age of ten reading this, the choice is not whether or not to eat healthily to prevent heart disease, but whether or not you want to reverse the heart disease you probably already have.
Is that even possible? When researchers took people with heart disease and put them on the type of plant-based diet followed by populations without epidemic heart disease, their hope was that it could slow the disease process or perhaps even stop it. Instead, something miraculous happened. The disease really began to counter. She started to improve. As soon as the patients stopped consuming artery-clogging diets, their bodies were able to begin dissolving some of the plaque, opening the arteries without drugs or surgery, suggesting that their bodies wanted to heal all along, but were never allowed to. gave the opportunity. That improvement in blood flow to the heart muscle occurred after just three weeks of healthy eating.
Plant-based diets are not only safer and cheaper. They can work better because they allow us to deal with the real problem. cause of the illness.
