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Heart Messing with the Heart Monitor
28 Sunday Dec 2014
Posted Health Facts
in28 Sunday Dec 2014
Posted Health Facts
inTags
07 Friday Nov 2014
Posted Health Facts, Health News
inHello everyone,
Today is an exciting day, and a good one for heart health!
The Ottawa Heart Institute has just opened a Women’s Heart Health Centre–the first of its kind in Canada. The Centre will focus on heart disease care, awareness and research in Ottawa and aims to expand its programs all across Canada next year.
So why is this centre so essential? According to the Ottawa Heart Institute, most research on heart disease has been with male participants. However, males and females experience heart disease differently. As well, research has shown that heart disease is declining in males and rising in females. Heart disease is, in fact, the number one cause of death in women over the age of 35! Learning about how the disease presents itself in women is a crucial step in improving diagnosis, treatment and survival rates.
The Centre and its partners already have a few programs in mind, including, but not limited to:
1) CardioPrevent® — a screening and counselling service for women at risk of developing heart disease.
2) Virtual Care Program–An online heart health management system, designed to provide resources and strategies to help women control heart disease risk.
3) Women@Heart Program– a peer support group for women with heart disease.
Interested in more information? Here’s a news article about the opening of the new Centre (and the source for the information above!): http://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/2318009
And here’s the Centre’s website: http://cwhhc.ottawaheart.ca/
Stay tuned for more news!
Cheers,
Ali
03 Friday Jan 2014
Posted Health Facts, Health News, Uncategorized
inHello all– Happy New Year! (pssst.. one of our 2014 New Year’s Resolutions should be to become more heart healthy!)
It’s been a while since I posted but I’m glad to be back. So today’s post will be about….a new heart surgical technique!
Heart surgery is often necessary to repair malfunctioning heart valves or to correct other heart defects. Unfortunately, traditional heart surgery (or “open-heart” surgery) is also invasive and requires an incision to be made down the entire chest. The surgery can result in scarring and post-surgical recovery periods may be long. As well, open-heart surgery is sometimes considered too “high-risk” to perform, depending on the type of defect.
So, what is the new technique? A surgical team at the Montreal Heart Institute, led by Drs. Michael Pellerin and Dennis Bouchard, has developed a minimally invasive surgical technique. Rather than making an incision down the chest, the technique uses only a small incision in the right hand side of the chest. The technique was initially used for surgery on the mitral valve (or left AV valve), and later expanded to different valves and defects. The advantages of this technique apply to both the patient and the health care system as a whole. For the patient, there is less pain, a faster recovery period and less scarring. This results in shorter hospital stays, improving the efficiency of the health care system.
Currently, it is expected that 150 to 250 minimally invasive surgeries will be carried out yearly. A collaborative International Masters Program has been set up to train more surgeons in this technique. Also, clinical studies are being carried out, and are expected to support the idea of a wide-spread implementation of this technique in the future. Drs. Pellerin and Bouchard are convinced that minimally invasive surgeries will one day become the gold standard for heart surgery.
And that’s all for me! What do you think? Post a comment below!
Ali
27 Wednesday Nov 2013
Posted Health Facts, Heart and Stroke Trivia
inTags
When you laugh, your laughter causes the lining of your blood vessel walls to relax and expand, and sends 20% more blood flowing through your entire body. Thus, laughter might be the perfect medicine for stress.
So laugh more often, your heart will be pleased 😀
Source: WebMD
11 Monday Nov 2013
Posted Health Facts, Heart and Stroke Trivia
inEvery day, your heart beats about 100,000 times, sending 2,000 gallons of blood surging through your body. Although it’s no bigger than your fist, your heart has the mighty job of keeping blood flowing through the 60,000 miles of blood vessels that feed your organs and tissues.
Source: WebMD
04 Monday Nov 2013
Posted Health Facts, Heart and Stroke Trivia
inTags
Did you know that?
Your body has about 60,000 miles of blood vessels. Since the distance around the Earth is about 25,000 miles, this means that your blood vessels could travel more than two times around the Earth.
01 Friday Nov 2013
Posted Health Facts, Health News
inTags
Photo cred: (LINK)
Hey guys! I hope your hearts are doing well, and you are all staying healthy! So today’s post is going to be about…revolutions in heart health! Specifically, how 3D printing can be used in the future to help those suffering from heart disease and other coronary difficulties.
3D printing is the process of making a solid object by laying down successive layers of material. The first working 3D printer was created in 1984, but 3D printing has only recently gained widespread popularity and acknowledgement in the field of medicine. 3D printing has already been used to create millions of hearing aids, an area where 3D printing perfectly satisfies the need of mass customization, as the shape of each patient’s ear canal is unique.
Although regenerative medicine has already successfully implanted lab-grown skin, and even larger scale body parts such as a bladder, the current method uses living human cells which slowly grow over artificial scaffolds. In comparison, 3D bioprinting would print living cells layer by layer, giving greater speed and precision. In April 2013, the biotechnology company Organovo presented its first fully cellular liver tissue, the first time 3D human tissues have been generated from 3D bioprinting.
Researchers are hoping to use 3D bioprinting not only to create human tissues for research, but replacement skin, body parts, and eventually organs such as the heart. As hearts are incredibly complex, 3D printing of entire organs won’t happen anytime in the near future, but until then, 3D printing will work towards possibly creating veins, arteries, valves, and pumps.
I hope this post was informative and interesting!
Much health to your heart,
Julianne Mak