Not everyone who suffers a heart attack clutches their chest and falls to the floor. “I woke up and felt like a pill was stuck in my throat,” says Betsy, a 68-year-old patient from Upper Providence. “I was taking antibiotics at the time and really didn’t think much of it,” she adds. [...]

If you think heart disease is a disease of the middle aged, think again.
Experts recommend that cholesterol screening should begin as early as 20 years of age because it is a key indicator of heart-attack risk, and should be rechecked at least once every five years.

Most patients with heart failure likely to benefit from a pacemaker including the capacity for cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) do not receive such an implantable device, reports a national study in the December 2009 issue of the American Heart Journal. Less than half who qualify for the device therapy may actually get it, the large-scale [...]

Viterbi School biomedical engineer and cardiologist Tzung John Hsiai hopes to develop a new tool to help clinicians distinguish cardiac emergencies requiring immediate surgery from chronic problems manageable with drugs and lifestyle change.

The largest national stem cell study for heart disease showed the first evidence that transplanting a potent form of adult stem cells into the heart muscle of subjects with severe angina results in less pain and an improved ability to walk. The transplant subjects also experienced fewer deaths than those who didn’t receive stem cells.