Women's Heart Disease and Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) - Burt's Stent Blog "The Voice in the Ear"


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December 2, 2011 -- 7:30pm EST

Women's Heart Disease and Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS)

Dr. Habib Samady of Emory
in Atlanta at IVUS console

I've written before about the use of IVUS in stent and angioplasty procedures in women, most recently in October about a study done at NYU Medical Center. My article, "Intravascular Ultrasound (IVUS) Imaging Reveals Hidden Heart Attack Culprit In Women", showed how intravascular imaging could detect a type of coronary disease not seen on angiography.

Now a similar tale has been broadcast by CBS affiliate WGCL-TV in Atlanta about how a type of coronary narrowing more typical in women may not be seen on a standard angiogram because it's evenly distributed along the arterial wall or channel and doesn't appear as a "spike" or sudden narrowing -- yet it may be restricting the flow of blood to the heart just the same. Once again -- angiography alone is not enough to accurately diagnose coronary artery disease and guide its treatment.

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Dr. Habib Samady of Emory University Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia explains more in this story and video clip on the WGCL-TV web site, reported by Kara Pesavento. (Emory, by the way, was the nexus for coronary angioplasty in the U.S. -- it's where Andreas Gruentzig moved to from Switzerland 30 years ago and where he taught thousands of doctors how to perform his then controversial new procedure.)

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