When a patient checks in to the hospital to be treated for heart disease, Dr. Thomas Curran said he and his colleagues often wonder: Could this have been prevented?
“We all think to ourselves, ‘If we got to this patient 10 years earlier, and treated their blood pressure, they wouldn’t be here with congestive heart failure,’” Curran said.
Heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the United States. But more is being learned about underlying conditions and prevention, said Curran, a cardiologist at UR Medicine Cardiac Care.
“We may have to change the way we look at these patients,” Curran said. “Just not as individual cardiac patients, but as patients with diabetes, obesity and congestive heart failure.”
These metabolic diseases often result in acute heart failure if not treated, Curran said, and doctors are exploring ways to prevent heart disease, stroke, and cardiovascular risk factors by managing these related illnesses earlier.
"If you're having a heart attack or stroke, you know you have a problem,” Curran said. “If you have one of these metabolic diseases, a lot of times, you don't know you have the problem until all of a sudden it manifests itself with congestive heart failure or stroke or something bad.”
These conditions also reflect socioeconomic disparities, he said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that Black patients die from heart disease more frequently than any other race or ethnicity. Curran said physicians should be more proactive when caring for patients who, by societal standards, are at risk for developing these underlying conditions.
He said doctors need to emphasize the importance of better lifestyle choices, like a healthier diet and exercise.
“We speak about hypertension, we speak about obesity, we speak about diabetes, as if they're separate diseases,” Curran said. “These are manifestations of lifestyle choices in a lot of situations.”
