Dr. Thames spoke today at an American Medical Association media briefing on heart disease. Ischemic heart disease includes heart attack and related heart problems caused by narrowed heart arteries that reduce the amount of blood and oxygen reaching the heart. One of the symptoms of ischemic heart disease is angina, which is chest discomfort caused by reduced blood flow to the heart muscle caused by blocked arteries.
New research indicates angina is a more serious health problem than previously believed.
We' ve successfully been doing balloon angioplasty since the 1970s. Now we are using vascular stents as structural supports. On the surgical side, avoiding the heart-lung machine is proving beneficial to the patients. A partial inhibitor of fatty acid oxidation, ranolazine shifts the metabolism of the heart muscle from fatty acids to glucose. When the heart is not getting enough oxygen, as is often the case with ischemic heart disease, it cannot burn fatty acids or glucose to produce energy.