Even if you had serious heart disease a century ago, your doctor likely wouldn’t have told you. will do Please inform your friends and relatives.
This was the advice of a prominent medical textbook from the 1920s. At the time, heart disease “prevention” was a nascent concept focused on the onset of acute rheumatic fever, which can cause fatal heart damage.
So what is the threshold for hypertension? A whopping 160/95mmHg.
In this week’s issue of Circulation, the American Heart Association’s flagship magazine, renowned cardiologist Dr. Eugene Braunwald kicks off the AHA’s 100th anniversary with a bird’s-eye view of cardiovascular disease as it was understood in 1924. Ta.
Braunwald, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School, also reviews important developments in cardiology over the past century. At 94 years old, he has witnessed much of it.
Changes in the field have been “breathtaking,” Braunwald wrote, with important advances in the understanding and prevention of cardiovascular risk factors, as well as advances in treatments, imaging, devices, and drugs. mentioned.
There’s still much work to do, he says, but “we’re truly standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Dr. Braunwald’s paper is published in the Journal of the American Heart Association. 100th Anniversary Collection.
