Young Show Signs of Heart Disease / Or…, you thought you were too young?
Article published in The Toronto Star, November 10, 1999, p. A 27
Researchers, looking at heart transplant patients have accidentally found clear signs of the beginnings of heart disease in young donors in their 20s and even some teenagers.
One in six teenagers who had their hearts used for transplant had started to develop fatty streaks in their arteries, researchers said yesterday.
“They had the seeds of heart disease that show up as a heart attack 20 to 30 years later,” said Dr. Murat Tuzcu of the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
He said the message was clear: “I think parents should be aware that this thing starts early. We can’t sit in our comfortable chairs and wait for a heart attack.”
“Doctors performing autopsies of young people – killed in accidents or died of other causes not related to disease – have found fatty streaks in the arteries, Tuzcu said.
All the young donors had been healthy when they died and had no symptoms of heart disease.
The blockages became more common as the donors got older. Tuzcu said about 72 per cent of the 36 heart donors aged between 41 and 50 had blockages, compared with about 16 per cent of the 32 donors under 20.
The doctor was not looking for heart disease, but made his discovery while examining the hearts of 125 young donors.
Tuzcu checked the status of transplanted hearts a few weeks after surgery – not enough time for recipients to develop their own plaques.
He was surprised to find that even the youngest donors under the age of 20 often had the beginnings of blockages, he told a meeting of the American Heart Association.
“This phenomenon was more prominent and frequent in young boys than in young girls,” he said. He added that about one in five boys and one in 10 girls had the blockages.
He said parents should make sure their children exercise and eat right. “They should eat vegetables and (whole) grains and fruit,” Tuzcu said. “We certainly are not advocating putting kids on a diet. He suggested that they eat fewer treats and junk food, and exercise more.
Safe for Elderly, or you thought you were too old…? The following text appeared in the Toronto Star, Friday, March 3, 2000, p. G1
From the Star’s News Services: Heart surgery may be a safe option for patients over 80 years old with no other risk factors, even though most doctors are reluctant to operate on that age group, according to the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.
The study says heart surgeons should look at a patient’s entire risk profile and not rely on age alone when deciding whether to operate. It also mentions ageism as a factor in reserving aggressive medical care for younger people.
However, octogenarians deemed healthy apart from their their heart disease had only a 4 per cent chance of dying as a result of surgery, against a death rate of 2 to 3 per cent for all age groups.