Prevention and Cure

New Zealand Listener, Volume 41, Issue 1053, 30 October 1959, Page 32

Prevention and Cure

NE of the greatest killers of our small nation, disease of the heart and blood-vessels, is taking a few knocks from medical science. Physicians and scientists in developed countries are finding more and more ways of fighting back, and, as there is great interest in our Own country in heart and bloodvessel troubles, I mean to bring you up to date on advances in this field. It is quite amazing what can be done with new diagnostic aids, Doctors now pass thin rubber tubes called cardiac catheters right into the left side of the heart, take direct pressure measurements, measure the oxygen in the blood, and get information about valves- that may have been damaged, and about heart arteries blocked by an attack of coronary thrombosis, There is a new X-ray gadget, an image intensifier, enabling the doctor to see an extremely bright picture of the beating heart on a fluorescent screen, yet putting the patient to even less risk from radiation than with an ordinary X-ray picture. You know about the electrocardiograph which records the nervous stimulation of the heart beat, but may not. realise that radio-isotopes are tracing disordered action of the heart with origins in the thyroid gland. Chemical tests of body functions are conscripted to give a total picture of the body’s working in folk with wonky hearts and blood-vessels. Without all this diagnostic information, the advances in treatment could not be applied. Surgery of the heart and blood-vessels is on the up and up! Conditions written off as hopeless in my student days are now being cured. I remember being very sorry for a pleasant middle-aged man who had a big aneurysm of the aorta, the big blood-vessel carrying the arterial blood away from the heart. An aneurysm is a ballooning out of a thinning artery wall. Picture an inner tube ballooning out through an outer motor tyre and you have the idea. Your car is under threat of an immediate flat tyre at the first strain. The person with an aneurysm is under a similar threat of bursting, and death if the rupture is of any size, This condition can now be cured ‘even in the biggest of bloodvessels. The surggon is now able to cut

out the weak bulging section and join the ends again. In a recent series of 1000 cases of aneurysm of the aorta, 95% of operations were successful. When it comes to blood-vessels partly or completely blocked, causing strokes or coronary thrombosis or troubles in limbs, it may now be possible to replace diseased sections of arteries with synthetic substitutes. Nylon and dacron, etc., are finding other uses than in stockings and shirts. The heart itself is now an open book to the surg2on since heart-lung machines have been developed to take over the circulation while he operates. He can now attack congenital defects with an excellent chance of correction, and do things with valves undreamed of even ten years ago. Physicians have not been idle, New drugs-very new indeed, mostly used only since 1950-enable the doctor to bring down and keep blood pressures at a reasonable level. Folk with increasingly high blood pressures, who could not be saved a few years ago, now have more than a sporting chance of living, and sometimes the effect of the new drugs is dramatic. All these modern skills in diagnosis. surgery and medicine are understood and practised in our land, thanks to the enthusiasm and keenness of a proportion of our doctors in research here with drugs and

techniques, and in going ‘abroad from time to time to make sure New Zealand is not slipping behind in the ‘march of medical skills. The advent of penicillin has enabled the family doctor to lessen the damage of rheumatic fever, the great enemy of hearts, and ‘to reduce the chances of recurrence. Yes, the last few years have seen tremendous advances in diagnosis . and treatment of heart and bloodvessel. disease! What of prevention of these troubles? Here the story is unclear yet, though research is going on apace. All I can tell you is your chances of long life are improved by keeping on the lean side, eating a balanced diet. taking regular exercise, and releasing tensions in pleasurable relaxation or in some form of service to others.