Heart gets thumping again with new album, tranquil attitude

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Even as rock music struggles to regain its early vitality and creative pulse, Heart isn’t losing heart. After 35 years, the Seattle band that blazed a trail for female rockers refuses to coast or pull over. On Tuesday, sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson, the group’s only remaining founders, unveil 13th studio album Red Velvet Car , their first since 2004’s Jupiter’s Darling . Intimate, intense and anchored by Ann’s powerhouse vocals and Nancy’s aggressive acoustic guitar, the album recalls such groundbreaking works as 1976 debut Dreamboat Annie , 1977’s Little Queen and 1978’s Dog & Butterfly . Car may be new, but the odometer is maxed out. “This is a traveling album with old-fashioned grooves and songs that have to do with where we’ve …

Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic

NEW YORK — A few months ago, Dr. Thomas Einhorn was treating a patient with a broken ankle that wouldn’t heal, even with multiple surgeries. So he sought help from the man’s own body. Einhorn drew bone marrow from the man’s pelvic bone with a needle, condensed it to about four teaspoons of rich red liquid, and injected that into his ankle. Four months later the ankle was healed. Einhorn, chairman of orthopedic surgery at Boston University Medical Center, credits “adult” stem cells in the marrow injection. He tried it because of published research from France. Einhorn’s experience isn’t a rigorous study. But…

CPR studies find no benefit to mouth-to-mouth over chest compressions alone

For anyone trying to save a victim of cardiac arrest, the questions used to be: How many breaths do I give? How many chest compressions? And do I really want to do this in the first place? New research published Thursday, however, adds to growing evidence that cardiopulmonary resuscitation could be far simpler and less off-putting. For adults in cardiac arrest, mouth-to-mouth breathing might not be needed — or even helpful. Two studies in which telephone dispatchers instructed bystanders how to perform CPR found that patients who got only chest compressions…

Pumps like Cheney’s can extend lives of patients with congestive heart failure

If former vice president Richard B. Cheney’s experience is similar to that of other patients who have heart pumps implanted, he has a better than 50-50 chance of surviving two years. This Story Pump found to extend heart patients’ lives How Cheney’s heart device works The device, which takes over the work of the heart’s main pumping chamber, should lessen discomfort and allow Cheney to do activities as strenuous as riding a bicycle. But it is far from a miracle cure for end-stage congestive heart failure, the condition from which he apparently suffers. Cheney, 69, had…

Cheney’s new heart pump not a miracle cure

If former vice president Richard B. Cheney’s experience is similar to that of other patients who have heart pumps implanted, he has a better than 50-50 chance of surviving two years. The device, which takes over the work of the heart’s main pumping chamber, should make him feel better and allow him to do activities as strenuous as riding a bicycle. But it is far from a miracle cure for end-stage congestive heart failure, the condition from which he apparently…

Heart attack fells reformer who had long worked to improve emergency-room care

On Memorial Day, Thai McGreivy suffered a massive heart attack while biking on Goldsboro Road in Bethesda. Paramedics rushed to the scene, where he lay unconscious with no pulse. They took him to Suburban Hospital’s emergency room, where a team revived his heart. McGreivy, 43, an emergency room physician himself, remained in a coma even as his heart showed signs of recovery. But four days after his collapse, doctors performed a scan on his brain, revealing severe damage due to a long period of oxygen deprivation. Days later, officials pronounced him brain-dead and…

When is someone brain dead? Experts revise guidelines

Determining brain death is a complex process that requires dozens of tests to make sure doctors come to the correct conclusion. With that goal in mind, the American Academy of Neurology has issued new guidelines — an update of guidelines first written 15 years ago — that call on doctors to conduct a lengthy examination, including following a step-by-step checklist of some 25 tests and criteria that must be met before a person can be considered brain dead. The goal of the guidelines is to remove some of the guess work and variability among doctors in their procedure for declaring brain death, which previous research has found to be a problem, said guidelines…

Atrial fibrillation is easy to find, but evidence on how best to treat it isn’t

Judy Currier remembers waking up the morning after doctors spent hours cauterizing tissue inside her heart. They were trying to correct a rapid, irregular heartbeat that had left her exhausted, frequently out of breath and at a higher risk of stroke. “I was amazed at how quiet my heart was,” says Currier, a 69-year-old resident of Springfield. But the benefits of the treatment, called catheter ablation, didn’t last. Soon her heartbeat became erratic again, forcing her to ask: What should I do? That’s the dilemma facing more than 2.2 million Americans who have atrial fibrillation, the most common heart arrhythmia and one of the most vexing to control. While treatments ranging from medication to surgery are proliferating — …

Heart attack shouldn’t kill your sex life, study says

Surviving a heart attack can kill your sex life. But it doesn’t have to, and a new study shows doctors play a key role in whether it does. Patients were less likely to resume having sex if their doctors did not talk about when it was safe, the study found. Many heart attack survivors fear that a tryst could land them back in the hospital — or even in the graveyard. But the chance of that is extremely small, doctors say. “People perceive it might kill them. And it’s not just the person with the heart attack, but …

Heart health: Doctors devise less invasive valve surgery

ATLANTA — A new study shows that leaky heart valves can be fixed without major surgery, by guiding a tiny clothespin-like clip into place from an incision in a vein in the groin, doctors said Sunday. The clip was designed to fix leaky mitral valves, diagnosed in 250,000 people in the USA each year. Doctors say the research heralds a new era, one in which major heart defects can be repaired without slicing open the chest to …

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