(Irina Shatilova/iStock via Getty Images) People hospitalized with COVID-19 may have an increased risk for heart damage, but not so much the type of inflammation previous research suggested, according to a new study. Early in the pandemic, several studies suggested many COVID-19 survivors experienced heart damage even if they didn’t have underlying heart disease and…
Stroke survivor Barbara Bartels. (Photo courtesy of Andrea Borsuk) Barbara Bartels and a friend were catching up over coffee on a Sunday morning in August. They’d met up at a café not far from Bartels’ home in Santa Cruz, California. As an artist and a bit of a self-professed hermit, Bartels didn’t socialize much beyond…
(tommy/DigitalVision Vectors via Getty Images) The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a steep rise in cardiovascular disease deaths in the U.S., with especially high mortality rates for Asian, Black and Hispanic people, according to a new statistical report from the American Heart Association. Cardiovascular disease-related deaths jumped from 874,613 in 2019 to 928,741…
Luther Moxley (right) with his partner, Wayne Curtis. (Photo courtesy of Luther Moxley) Every morning, Luther Moxley helps his partner of 35 years, Wayne Curtis, out of bed and into his wheelchair. Curtis, who has Parkinson’s disease and is partially blind, washes himself seated in the shower, but he needs Moxley to dry him and…
Cardiac arrest survivor and lacrosse player Peter Laake. (Photo courtesy of Gwin Photography) On April 16, 2021, Peter Laake was a starting freshman defender for his prep school’s varsity lacrosse team. He’d had a good year, and now his team was playing a key rival on home turf in Towson, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb. The…
(ATHVisions/E+ via Getty Images) Several years ago, researchers published in JAMA a promising discovery: intensively lowering blood pressure appeared to reduce the risk for cognitive decline in people 50 and older with high blood pressure. But questions remained about whether the strategy was safe or effective in people whose diastolic blood pressure – the bottom…
Cardiac arrest survivor Sarah Katzenmaier in the zombie costume she wore the day she collapsed in a parade during her city’s annual Halloween “Thriller” event. (Photo courtesy of Sarah Katzenmaier) A week before Halloween 2021 and five days before her 68th birthday, Sarah Katzenmaier slipped into a royal blue bridesmaid dress and carefully applied her…
(pablohart/E+ via Getty Images) Stroke symptoms that vanish in less than an hour still require emergency medical assessments to prevent a full-blown stroke, according to a new science report from the American Heart Association. The scientific statement, published Thursday in the AHA journal Stroke, offers guidance for evaluating suspected “warning strokes” – called transient ischemic…
(Ridofranz/iStock via Getty Images) Women and men born with simple or moderate heart defects who choose to have children are no more likely than others to experience infertility as adults, a study in Denmark suggests. The researchers said it is the first study to examine the risk of infertility among women and men with congenital…
Dr. Ralph Sacco (right) and AHA CEO Nancy Brown. (American Heart Association) In the early 2000s, when I was Chief Operating Officer of the American Heart Association, I flew to New York for some meetings. I remember looking forward to the visit because I was going to meet a volunteer whom colleagues had been raving…