Word: cardiac
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After Elvis Presley was found dead on his bathroom floor in Memphis on Aug. 16, 1977, the county medical examiner ruled that the king of rock 'n' roll had died of natural causes. The verdict: cardiac arrhythmia, perhaps brought on by longstanding hypertension and atherosclerosis. But rumors, fed by a toxicology study showing traces of at least ten prescription drugs in his body, soon circulated depicting Presley as a medication junkie who had fallen victim to his habit. There was even talk of a "drug trailer" with a live-in nurse on the lush grounds of his Graceland...
...professionals, doctors continue to live up to their reputation as the worst scribblers. A study published in the American Medical Association's Journal reports that at one hospital 33% of all the physicians' notes were essentially illegible (general surgeons and urologists were the worst offenders; gynecologists and cardiac surgeons did somewhat better). Pharmacy Times magazine regularly reproduces particularly hopeless prescriptions...
What caused the attacks? A growing number of cardiac specialists now agree on the probable villain in these and thousands of other heart attacks: coronary artery spasm, a sudden and transient constriction of a blood vessel. Lasting from 30 seconds to many minutes, the spasm effectively blocks a vessel and keeps oxygen from reaching the heart...
...notion of coronary spasm dates back at least to the turn of the century. But there was no proof, and spasm remained simply a theory, overshadowed by mounting evidence that atherosclerotic disease was a major cause of cardiac attacks. Then, in 1970, doctors got "the first eyeball look at an episode of coronary spasm." At the University of California in Los Angeles, Cardiologist Albert Kattus and his team were doing a coronary bypass operation on a woman when suddenly one of the vessels began to constrict. As that happened, Kattus recalls, "we could feel that her coronary artery was tough...
...performed 27 years earlier as an intern: defying a then prevalent medical taboo against tampering with the living heart, he threaded a thin tube through the vein of his left arm until it reached his right ventricle. The catheterization technique he thus pioneered became a standard tool in treating cardiac problems...