RISK FACTOR IN THE HEART DISEASE

Risk Factors and Causes risk factors for cardiovascular disease include unmodifiable factors (i.e., factors that cannot be changed) and modifiable factors (i.e., risk factors that may be controlled or reduced by lifestyle choices and medications). Unmodifiable risk factors include the following like Age (older than 65 years old), Family history of heart disease (especially before age 50), Male gender, Menopause in women (Prior to menopause, women have a lower risk than men, but after menopause, the risk is approximately the same in women as it is in men.) The Framingham Heart Study has shown that having a sibling (i.e., brother or sister) with heart disease is a strong risk factor for the condition. It is unclear whether this increased risk (as high as 45%) is due to genetic factors or to similar childhood lifestyles.

The first heart transplants and artificial hearts. A team of South African surgeons headed by Christiaan Barnard performed the first human heart transplant in 1967. The patient lived 18 days and died of a lung infection. Norman Shumway pioneered in heart transplants in the United States. He and his surgical team performed the first U.S. heart transplant on an adult patient in 1968. Shumway refined transplant techniques and performed more transplants than any other surgeon. In the late 1960's and early 1970's, doctors performed many heart transplants. But most patients died within a year, mainly because the body rejected the new organ. Doctors almost stopped doing heart transplants. Then in the 1980's, they began using a drug called cyclosporine to fight rejection. Cyclosporine greatly increased the survival rate among transplant patients. The shortage of donor hearts has become the chief obstacle to successful heart transplants today.

Development of heart surgery. An American cardiologist named James B. Herrick made the first diagnosis of a heart attack in 1912. In 1938, Robert E. Gross, an American surgeon, performed the first successful repair of a congenital heart defect. Gross sewed the hole in the artery of a child suffering from patent ductus arteriosus. In 1944, Helen Brooke Taussig and Alfred Blalock, two American physicians, developed an operation to help correct abnormal circulation of blue babies. In 1952, American surgeon Charles Hufnagel operated on a beating heart and implanted the first artificial heart valve. In 1953, another American surgeon, John H. Gibbon, and his associates successfully used a heart-lung machine they developed, which enabled doctors to stop the heart while the device pumped and oxygenated the blood. Doctors could then repair defects that could not be corrected while the heart beat.

Invention of new medical instruments. During the 1800's, many inventions expanded doctors' knowledge of the heart and helped in their diagnosis and treatment of heart problems. In 1816, a French physician named Rene Laennec invented the stethoscope, which enabled doctors to listen to sounds of the heart and other organs. In 1880, Samuel Siegfried von Basch, a Viennese physician, developed the sphygmomanometer, an instrument to measure blood pressure without breaking the skin. Russian physician Nikolai Korotkoff used a stethoscope in 1905 to take the pulse while measuring blood pressure, thus recording systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Doctors still use this technique. In 1903, Willem Einthoven, a Dutch physiologist, invented the string galvanometer, a device to measure minute electrical currents generated by the activity of the heart, and so developed the basis of the electrocardiograph. By the 1920's, the electrocardiograph had become the chief diagnostic tool in cardiology.