Cardiovascular Disease: A Brief Summary

During Dr. Haywards time speaking he talks about Cardiovascular disease. Before beginning he talks about his background. One thing I found interesting was his undergraduate degree was biology and physical education and he then went to the University of Maryland to focus on a masters degree in Physiology of Exercise. I never know that NASA had a program like that, where they bring a personal trainer in. He said that he went to the University of Buffalo for his doctorate and that he met a Physician at Rochester, New York that had ties to a catholic hospital where Dr. Hayward worked at. After that he was attracted by Deb Varland to comeback to Spring Arbor because of the Health and Exercise Science program with cardiac classes. He became a professor and coached here at SAU. He also did work at Cardiac rehab

The coronary arteries sit on the surface of the heart. Plaque builds up on the arteries causing atherosclerosis- hardening of the arteries. During World War I and II they discovered that people in battle had plaque built up at the ages of 18 through 25. Later they started doing autopsy on hearts of children killed in automobiles and found they were also having the same plaque build up. These studies have shown that the way we live is affecting our health. Many Americans suffer from Myocardial Infarction (heart attacks). Dr. Hayward talks about different ways to stop the blockage in the artery. One way is Angiography which is running a catheter in the wrist or femoral artery to see the blockages. Another way is stent grafting which is a closed balloon enters the narrowed artery and the balloon then inflates and deflates to crush the plaque and then a stent is placed to hold the artery open. Sometimes stent grafting doesn't work and they have to use Bypass surgery. Bypass surgery involves a harvested vessel, this is more dangerous and takes longer to