Heart Health Center

If you have kidney disease, in addition to all the other health issues you need to pay attention to, you need to consider the effect of kidney disease on the heart.  People with kidney disease, unfortunately, are at an especially high risk of developing heart disease.  Fortunately, there are things you can do to substantially reduce that risk.

Read about kidney disease and the heart.

What diet is best for you after you've had a heart attack, or after being diagnosed with coronary artery disease? Until recently, dietary recommendations for people with coronary artery disease have been largely guesswork. But recently, evidence from clinical studies has clarified the answer.

Read about the best diet for people with coronary artery disease.

In some patients with heart failure, a new kind of pacemaker can re-coordinate the muscular function of the damaged heart, relieving the symptoms of heart failure, and reducing the odds of dying. Read about CRT here.

Pulmonary embolus - a blood clot that becomes lodged in the pulmonary artery - is a very common and very serious problem.  Up to 30% of people who have pulmonary embolus will die unless they receive treatment.

Read about pulmonary embolus - its causes, its symptoms, and its treatment - here.

Everyone knows that smoking accelerates atherosclerosis, and makes heart attacks more likely over time.

But did you know that the cigarette you smoke today could cause a heart attack TODAY?  Or that if you quit smoking today, your risk of a heart attack is substantially reduced by tomorrow?

That very next stick you light up could do you in.  Read about it here.

If you have had syncope (transient loss of consciousness), your doctor will want to do an evaluation to figure out what caused it.  Fortunately, in most cases the evaluation of syncope should be pretty straightforward. Unfortunately, too many doctors fail to approach this problem in a systematic way, and their patients can wind up having unnecessary tests and experiencing unnecessary anxiety.

This article describes how syncope should be evaluated.

The Long QT syndrome is an inherited disorder of the heart's electrical system that can cause sudden death, even in young, healthy individuals. Read about long QT syndrome, its causes and treatment, here.

The medical name for fainting spells, or a temporary loss of consciousness, is syncope (sin-co-pee). Syncope is a pretty common symptom, and it it thought that most people will experience syncope  at least once in their lives.  Still, because it may be a sign of a serious underlying medical problem, if you have syncope, you should contact your doctor to discuss the need for an evaluation.

This article discusses the symptom of syncope, and the many things that can cause it.

Here is a brief description of pacemakers - what they do, how they are inserted, and what it means to have one.

On rare occasions, pregnancy can lead to a condition called postpartum cardiomyopathy, or pregnancy-associated heart failure.

Women who develop postpartum cardiomyopathy experience the onset of heart failure either during the last month of pregnancy, or within five months of delivering a baby. These women have no prior underlying heart disease, and no other identifiable reason to develop heart disease. Their heart failure can be a temporary, self-limited condition, or can progress to severe, life-threatening heart failure.

Read here about postpartum cardiomyopathy.