Word: chested
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Charles Weiner, 45, was trudging through Boston's snowy streets one night when he suddenly felt a gripping pain in his chest. In the previous eight years he had had two similar experiences, but after thorough physicals, including blood tests and electrocardiograms, doctors could find nothing wrong with his heart and attributed the pains to a mild gall bladder attack or chest muscle strain. This time, though, Weiner was given a new diagnostic test. Doctors injected a radioactive substance into his bloodstream, then took pictures of his heart with a special camera that detects radioactivity. The pictures revealed that...
David Clendenen, 58, an electrical contractor in Sacramento, had never had any indication of heart trouble. But one morning last March, he suddenly felt "like there was an elephant sitting on my chest." Realizing he was having a heart attack, he called for help and was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Emergency room physicians stabilized his condition and transferred him to a special laboratory for a delicate experimental procedure. A long, thin plastic tube was inserted into an artery in his leg and gently pushed through the blood vessels all the way up into the aorta to the coronary...
...operation usually relieves angina, the severe chest pain that develops when the heart muscle is not getting enough blood. Bypass proponents also feel that the operation reduces the chance of death from heart attack in many patients. From 1975 to 1980, some 540,000 bypasses were performed in the U.S., too many according to some critics, who feel that drug therapy is safer, cheaper (a bypass costs about $15,000) and as effective in many cases. Says Surgeon John Kirklin of the University of Alabama Hospitals in Birmingham, who performs an average of six bypasses a week: "Bypass grafting...
...best way to do that is to detect the disease before it has grown desperate. Today physicians are refining their diagnostic techniques at a remarkable pace. A decade ago, they checked for heart disease by taking a patient's history, doing a physical examination and ordering chest X rays, electrocardiograms and angiograms. X-ray films and EKGs give general information about the heart's structure and electrical activity, respectively. Angiograms, special X-ray pictures made by injecting a radiopaque substance through a thin tube inserted into the heart or coronary arteries, provide more accurate information about constrictions...
...many people do not get help in time and are not resuscitated. One device that doctors now use to diagnose a patient's irregular rhythms is the 24-hour EKG recording. A person wears a tape recorder-size monitor that has electrodes leading from it to his chest as he pursues his normal daily routine. The machine automatically records his heart's rhythm over the day, during which time he keeps a diary of his activities and symptoms. Doctors then analyze both sets of data. If previously unsuspected and potentially dangerous rhythms are detected they can then...