The Magnitude of the Heart Attack Problem

The astronomical number of patients dying each year from heart attack is awesome and staggering. Just imagine a nuclear bomb falling on downtown Baltimore where presently there are 700,000 inhabitants and finding the next day only three citizens alive. That is what is happening with the heart attack problem each year in the United States. Each year we lose a city of citizens equal to the size of Baltimore and this occurs on an annual basis not over a lifetime. That is more deaths each year than all of the soldiers killed in past American Wars.

It is the number one killer of the adult population in the United States. It has been in first place since the turn of the Century and as we go into the new millennium it continues to be Public Enemy Number One. What the citizens of this country don't realize is the fact that this need not take place. Heart Attacks need not kill 600,000 Americans each year. It does so because we allow it to be a crashing illness. Citizens actually wait until symptoms are emergency enough to go into the emergency room. We know full well that half of these deaths are preventable in that there are tell tale signals that a heart attack is on its way. Fifty percent of patients with heart attacks have a history of stuttering chest symptoms before they crash. Heart Attacks usually present with chest pain but when the chest pain is not severe (such as chest pressure, chest fullness, chest ache or chest burning) it is not perceived as painful enough to go to the emergency room. Patients literally wait until it becomes emergency enough before going into the emergency room. Patients will tell you the reason why they didn't come in is because "it was not pain, doc!" We should learn from these histories taken from patients with heart attacks and appreciate that heart attacks have beginnings and that intervention early can actually prevent the heart attack from taking place, preventing death and damage to the heart muscle.

There are many other reasons why patients don't come in to the hospital early. In many instances the chest discomfort comes and goes allowing the patients to deceive themselves. Such patients do not feel it is emergency enough to call 911 and most importantly first responders do not act because they usually have a busy schedule and taking time would interfere with that schedule. The end result is that responders become more enablers than caregivers.

It is just incredible to believe that we have an illness that takes so many of our loved ones each year and we continue to accept the present day approach to the heart attack problem. We need to understand not only the magnitude of the problem of the heart attack but also the wonderful message that heart attacks are vulnerable and that they have an Achilles' heel and that we can prevent many of the heart attacks by having our citizens aware of intervention early as the best way to contain and prevent the heart attack. We can stop it. We call this approach "heart attack interruptus". We need to get this message out and to do so we need your help in spreading this simple message of prevention.