Heart Failure Epidemic?

Grand Rounds on the Internet

The first of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta‘s on-line and interactive Vascular Grand Rounds was held the evening of February 24th 2009. The benefits of leveraging the Internet for such rounds is that we are able to engage in an interactive way, individuals who are geographically dispersed throughout our service area and beyond.

Dr. Jonathan Howlett

Is there really a heart failure epidemic? Why heart failure may become a young person’s problem

Replay Available! Click Here

Prior LCIA sponsored session on Obesity Click Here

National Heart Strategy Points to Libin Institute

From the report “Building a Healthy Canada” as delivered to the Government of Canada by the Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan Steering Committee:

All parts of the network work together to ensure that people are assessed, referred and transported quickly to the best site for their care. They develop processes and procedures that ensure timely care.

For example, the Libin Cardiovascular Institute and the Calgary Health Region have a program to ensure rapid access to re-perfusion therapy for patients suffering a heart attack. Emergency service providers record an electrocardiogram on all patients with acute chest pain that is suspected to be heart-related and transmit it electronically to the on-call interventional cardiologist. Patients with an acutely blocked artery are then directed to the appropriate hospital, where they bypass admitting and emergency and go directly to the catheterization laboratory for immediate angioplasty and stenting as needed. According to data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information, for the past four years Calgary has had the lowest mortality rate for heart attack victims in Canada.

Read related archive article about Dr. Mouheiddin Traboulsi and the inception of the STEMI program highlighted in the national strategy paper – Click Here

Read the CMAJ study reporting results of Calgary’s STEMI implementation - Click Here

Heart strategy aims at top killer

Dr. Eldon Smith, chair of the Canadian Heart Health Strategy, speaks on Canada AM from CTV's studios in Ottawa, Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2009.

Dr. Eldon Smith OC, Chair of the Strategic Advisory Board of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta, has been leading the Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan (CHHS-AP) Steering Committee for over two years. Today, the CHHS-AP delivered its final report to the Government of Canada.

Cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke) is Canada’s No.1 killer and public health threat, costing the economy more than $22 billion annually: Strategy and Action Plan is road map to Building a Heart Healthy Canada

Read the UCalgary article – Click Here

Read the entire press release – Click Here

Watch a Canada AM interview with Dr. Smith – Click Here

CHHS-AP REPORTS

• Building a Heart Healthy Canada
  
• Realizing Our Vision
  

Read a brief bio of Dr. Smith – Click Here

Watch an interesting 2008 interview with Dr. Smith discussing what has been achieved and what needs to be achieved – Part 1 & Part 2

CBC Article

Globe and Mail Article

Canada.com Article

GlobalTV Article

Marfan Syndrome

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta Cardiologist Dr. Nanette Alvarez, recently spoke to CTV Calgary’s Karen Owen about Marfan Syndrome. Watch the CTV clip by clicking on the picture below, or selecting the link (then press play on the video box).

CTV article and video clip – Click Here

On-line session on Obesity

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta is experimenting with on-line public sessions on a variety on topics related to cardiovascular health. On February 23rd 2009, the Institute was a co-sponsor of an on-line session on obesity delivered by Dr. Arya Sharma, Scientific Director of the Canadian Obesity Network. The session was attended by participants from throughout North America!

A recording of the session is available – Click Here

Related educational resources can be found at:

• Dr. Sharma’s Blog
• LCIA Patient Resource Centre

Institute member contributes Hypertension editorial

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta’s Dr. Norm Campbell wrote an editorial for the February 9th 2009 edition of Hypertension. Have a read:

Hypertension Management

Time to Shift Gears and Scale Up National Efforts

Elevated blood pressure is a major modifiable risk for cardiovascular disease (CVD) and the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Current estimates indicate that 7.6 million premature deaths and 92 million disability-adjusted life years are attributable to suboptimal blood pressure. Most of the lifestyle causes of hypertension are well known, and clinical trials provide clear evidence that reducing blood pressure with antihypertensive drugs significantly decreases CVD morbidity and mortality. Despite this, the World Health Organization is predicting an epidemic of hypertension and, in clinical practice, most patients with hypertension are undiagnosed, untreated, or suboptimally treated. Against the backdrop of increasing CVD burden worldwide, the gap between what we know and do in hypertension prevention and management is a major cause for concern.

Achieving optimum hypertension control to prevent hypertension-associated CVD has been a substantial challenge. There are multiple reasons for lack of blood pressure control, including …

Hypertension. 2009;53:450-451

Read the rest on the Hypertension web-site.

Living Heart Healthy

by Michelle Biegler

February is “Heart Month”. This year, February 8-14, 2009, was dedicated to Heart Failure Awareness Week. During this time, our heart failure staff decided to celebrate by holding an evening event for people diagnosed with heart failure, friends, families and any others interested. The event was titled, “Living Heart Healthy: A guide to living well with Heart Failure” and was held on February 10, 2009.

The evening agenda included 4 speakers, all presenting on different areas of heart failure. First off was Dr. Jonathan Howlett, Cardiologist, discussing, “Living Well to prevent heart failure” He offered insight on heart failure, obesity, diabetes and hypertension and shared suggestions as to what you can do today to improve your condition.

Next was Tanis Lane, Nurse Clinician at the Foothills Medical Centre Cardiac Function Clinic, who spoke about “The patient’s role in the management of heart failure”. Her presentation focused on what the person living with heart failure can do on a daily basis, to improve their quality of life and to become more actively involved in their care.

After Tanis was Bob Ford, Pharmacist at the Foothills Medical Centre Cardiac Function Clinic, whose talk was entitled, “Pills and potions -notes and notions”. He covered the medications that are currently being used in the treatment of heart failure, vitamins and minerals as well as some good common sense insight on the use of medications in heart failure.

Heart-smart as kids

Dr. Matthias Friedrich, Director of the Libin Cardiovascular Institute’s Stephenson CMR Centre, spoke with Metro Calgary about educating kids on health.

Excerpt:

Unfortunately, Dr. Matthias Friedrich says there’s also too much salt on our plates, and it’s getting into the heart arteries of people as young as 12.

“Obesity is increasing dramatically in our society, especially at a young age,” Friedrich said. He works in cardiac sciences in the faculty of medicine at the University of Calgary.

He said that heart problems aren’t as big a concern in the minds of young people as they should be, as it is the leading cause of death in Canada.

To read the rest of the article, visit Metro News.

Institute member contributes BMJ editorial

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta’s Dr. William Ghali wrote an editorial for the February 16th 2009 edition of the BMJ. Have a read:

HDL cholesterol and cardiovascular risk

Treatments can increase HDL cholesterol, but do not independently reduce risk

History tends to repeat itself, in the medical sciences as in other domains. In the linked systematic review (doi:10.1136/bmj.b92), Briel and colleagues put high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol into perspective as a marker of risk, and their findings evoke memories of other risk markers.¹ Like HDL cholesterol, premature ventricular contractions are a validated risk marker for cardiovascular disease. Such contractions indicate an increased risk for adverse cardiovascular outcomes in the general population and in patients presenting with cardiovascular disease.^{2 3} Yet specific treatments that eliminate these contractions do not decrease the risk for adverse outcomes and can even increase risk.⁴ Thus, modifying the known marker of increased risk does not necessarily modify the risk itself.

Briel and colleagues demonstrate this phenomenon for HDL cholesterol in a meta-regression study of 108 clinical trials that assessed more than 300 000 patients and several lipid modifying treatments.¹ They found that …

BMJ 2009;338:a3065

Read the rest on the BMJ web-site.

Kindergarten Transplant

The Libin Cardiovascular Institute of Alberta’s Dr. Sarah Weeks was on Breakfast Television on February 11th along with 7 year old Taylor Stang and Taylor’s mom. Taylor is an inspirational little girl, who needed a heart transplant while in kindergarten. To watch the clip, click on the picture below (from the BT site, select the “BT Heart’s Heart Month” segment from along the bottom):

To watch Click Here

February is Heart Month. Visit the Heart and Stroke Foundation web-site for more information.

For other stories featuring Dr. Weeks – Click Here