My father recently underwent a heart catheterization after a couple of stress tests showed some odd results. It turns out that he has an artery that’s 70% blocked; he’ll be having a stent put in for that. All well and good, more or less.
The cath also showed that he had an artery that was 100% blocked–a heart attack waiting to happen–but it didn’t matter *because the blocked artery had grown an offshoot and bypassed itself.*The doctor reportedly (by my mother; I wasn’t there) said this wasn’t all that unusual. Indeed, supposedly he said that this happens something close to 50% of the time.
I don’t know about 50%–my mother is not necessarily the best source of info–but I find it happening at all pretty strange. (Not that I’m complaining, mind you.) Has anybody heard of this sort of thing before? Is this common knowledge and I’ve missed it somehow?
I think a somewhat more accurate explanation is that while the totally blocked artery was in the process of narrowing, its smaller branches enlarged and became capable of handling greater blood flow, so that the affected region of the heart didn’t die. (This, as opposed to entirely new branches developing).
It’s true that this happens fairly frequently…but isn’t possible when a sudden occlusion occurs.
it has been shown that the heart, when exercised regurally, devlopes what is called collateral circulation – it does grow more arteries. Also, the other arteries of the heart can expan to attempt to make up for blockages. The heart can make extra arteries past blockages, but it depends on how quickly the blockage grows, and its location. If the blockage leads to an acute shortage of blood, and there for hypoxia and such, then the AMI happens.
Jackmannii: Yeah, that sounds likely. My parents are the ones who presented it as growing a bypass…or, as my mother put it originally, “God grew your father a new artery.” (You’d have to know her…or maybe not.)
kinoons: That sounds about right too–he gets a lot of regular exercise. Though, oddly enough, his heart rate doesn’t go up much–during his stress test they said they wanted it up to 130 beats per minute, and no matter what they did it wouldn’t go over 80. He’s always been like that–his normal resting heart rate is in the 50s, and that’s assuming he’s chewing snuff.
A friend of mine is going in for a quadruple bypass tomorrow. He has one 100% blocked and one 90% blocked…but this is the interesting part: this guy is in his early 60’s and is a championship power lifter in his age group…850 pounds. He does other exercise nearly daily and has for 30 years. He’s been a vegetarian for decades. And he feels great.
Doctors told him he never would have reached this age were it not for the exercise and healthy living, because his heart is so fit it just grew “collateral circulation”.
But the docs say he’s still looking at a heart attack so he’s getting the surgery.
Heart disease causes are multi-factorial. Classically that means things like 1)sedentary lifestyle 2)male gender 3)lipid abnormalities like high cholesterol or high triglycerides 4)diabetes mellitus 5)smoking and 6)family history. In some people it just happens, even when the above-mentioned risk factors are not present. My aunt never smoked, ate sensibly, exercised a bit, and maintained an ideal body weight all her life, and had heart disease by age 55. My uncle, her brother weighed 400 lbs, never exercised, and smokes like a fiend. He’s 60, without signs of any heart disease. Go figure. But we know that if a population of people minimize the above risk factors, that population will have less heart disease than a population that really lets themselves go to hell. Individually, it’s a crapshoot, but one tries to stack the odds in one’s favor.
I have all six of Qadgop’s factors. If I abruptly disappear one day and never come back, you’ll know why.
The reason my father got checked out in the first place was a little weird. He has glaucoma in one eye, and uses prescription eye drops which keeps the pressure under control. Earlier this year the doctor put him on new drops; a bit later he started having seriously low pulse rates, even for him–in the 30 bpm range–general fatigue, and chest pains. It turned out to be the new eye drops–they are steroids which apparently cause cardiac reactions in a certain percentage of those who use them. Dad went back on his old drops and the symptoms went away, but his doctor wanted to check him out to see if there’d been any damage. There hadn’t been…but they ultimately found the blocked arteries, which had nothing to do with the drops.
Proof that bad things are sometimes good things in disguise.