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By By Lynn Smaha, M.D.,Ph.D. MORE THAN 1.1 MILLION AMERICANS WILL SUFFER HEART ATTACKS THIS YEAR and about one-third will die. Because the heart muscle is damaged during a heart attack, many heart attack survivors will go on to develop congestive heart failure, which limits the amount of blood that the heart muscle can pump. This can lead to death. There are an estimated 4,600,000 men and women living with congestive heart failure in the United States today, and that number is expected to grow. With that threat looming, heart disease research has taken on a greater urgency. We already know how to control many of the risk factors for heart disease—such as high blood pressure and cholesterol levels—but we need to know more in order to turn the tide of this growing epidemic. Fortunately, new research is yielding greater insight into the causes, prevention, detection and treatment of heart disease. New Diagnostic Tools Currently, cardiologists can only definitively diagnose coronary artery disease by injecting a dye into the heart arteries and observing where fatty deposits obstruct blood flow. This invasive test is called an angiogram. Several new noninvasive techniques now under investigation could reduce the discomfort, risk and hospital time for patients who must endure the search for life-threatening blocked arteries. The beating heart wiggles so much that a standard computed tomography (CT) scan yields only a blurred image. Ultrafast CT scanning takes microsecond snapshots of the heart and times them so that each shot is taken at the same point in the heart´s pumping cycle.
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