But first, we're going to go to a different scene. This was about 10 years
prior in Washington, D.C., April 29th 2008. Some of you already know a little bit
about this story. It was in the you know as you can tell cherry blossom. It was
beautiful weather in the 60s... half 50s... 60s. It was in the K Street district.
You can see it's kind of funny. It sits in downtown in a cosmopolitan area. They
could clearly afford to build buildings higher than seven stories, but why do
they not do that?
There's a law there that no building can be higher than the US Capitol so
that's why it's kept that way. What's it in? What human life form is in it? It's
infested with lobbyists so this is a big obvious area where we're joining in the
in the office of a very, very good doctor. He was doctor to the stars in D.C., doctor
to the lobbyists in D.C. Because lobbyists tend to have a lot of money. His name is
Mike Newman. The patient was 58 years old... excuse me 54 years... I need to get new
glasses, I thought it's 58, I'm gonna have to look back here... 58 years old. Nonsmoker.
A fairly unremarkable family history. Weight waist was 40 inches. He liked his
food. He had to eat out a lot as part of his job. And he was a very social
guy. He had high blood pressure. It was controlled on an ACE inhibitor. We might
talk later about ACE inhibitors and the fact that the ACE was changed to an ARB
and that actually might have had some impact on what happened later but we
might not... it depends on whether you have interests. I'm on an ACE inhibitor, and
this is the first day I've been able to talk without coughing for about three
weeks. But we'll talk about that later too. The CRP was unremarkable. It was
actually remarkable. The fact that Dr. Newman knew in 2008 to get a CRP. Very,
very few docs knew that. The cardiovascular risk event risk estimator...
anybody know what that is? Framingham. We'll talk about Framingham.
It's not a measurement of plaque. It's a guess, and it's a very bad guess.
We'll talk about why. Anyhow, he was worried. He knew that he needed to... he
kept saying, Doc, as soon as my job slows down a little bit, I'm gonna start losing
some weight. That was his mantra. He and Newman had shared their multiple times
publicly and so they said, okay, let's do a stress
tests, we'll see if you're good. It turned out normal, so he was relieved. He
went back to his lifestyle that he came from. And they changed the medicines from
the an ACE to an ARB. Six weeks later... oops... I gave away the story
but many of you knew already. Six weeks later, he's in the bureau
recording. Well, we'll get to that in a minute. Six weeks later, he's at work. He
collapses. CPR was done by co-workers. EMS was called at 1:40; they arrived four
minutes later so it wasn't because there was a slow EMS. They shocked him three
times on the way into the hospital where he was pronounced dead at Sibley
Memorial. Autopsy showed plaque rupture in the left anterior descending artery.
And yes, that's who it was. Tim Russert, big Russ, 1950-2008. He was returning from
a family vacation in Rome. His son had graduated from some Ivy League school,
Boston College, and has had a birthday. So they were celebrating that. He was the
host of Meet the Press and flew home to tape some things. He was walking to the
sound room to do voice-overs. His last words were, "What's
happening?" You know, this was 2008. That was the thing that he said. Instead of
"Hello," "What's happening?" He said that to Candace Harrington, the editing
supervisor. He'd been hosting Meet the Press since
1991. His passion, research, and ability to find clips of inconsistencies... you know,
he made fools of people. He did his research, and government
officials made fools of themselves because they were being inconsistent
with what they did, what they said, or what they did years before and they had
to squirm in front of the the press and the public. And people loved him for that.
But all that was ended. Plaque ruptured in his left anterior
descending. Now, why did that happen?
Well, the New York Times said, well, doctors didn't know that he had plaque. You
know that's one of the things we're gonna start talking about. How do you
know you have plaque? It's pretty important to know, wouldn't you think? I
think for most of us in here, we understand that. That's a reason
why a whole bunch is in here so we could get that CIMT. Well, they did
know... they were very clear he had a positive calcium score ten years before,
score of 210. Doctors Newman and Bren - Newman was his internist, Bren was his
cardiologist - they did say, look, the autopsy showed a lot more plaque than we
expected because he just had a negative stress tests and given that he passed
the negative stress test, we do know that he didn't have a 50% occlusion. But that
was over ten years ago. So things are a lot better now, right? Medicine has moved
very quickly well. Actually, there have been improvements in the heart attack rate.
We'll talk about that in just a minute. These guys, the interventional
cardiologists, love to give them a hard time. As you know, they've actually done
some stuff. There are very few groups of medicine that have actually changed the
American life expectancy they have by a few months. The public health guys did by
decades but the docs really can't take credit for that as the engineers anyway.
And anyhow, is that your choice for how you extend your life? It's hard to... it's
hard to change your habits. But it's a lot worse going through that and we've
got we've got some folks that could share
if that comes up later. So Wall Street Journal. When did that come out? Does
anybody know? Three months ago... four months ago. This was very, very recent.
Speaking of family and your loved ones,
this is the family for... I believe his name is Oscar. We'll find it in just a
few minutes. We'll see a picture of him. Heart Attack at 49 - America's Biggest
Killer is Making a Deadly Comeback. We'll look at the numbers. Yep, right
there. So yes, things were getting a lot better.
We were... actually, you can see that if you can. I'm going to just... this is a
yellow line and that's the cancer-death rate. So we were about to take a heart
attack off the number one spot for killers until about ten years ago, about
the time Tim Russert died. That curve started going right back up. And it's
still number one. And again, it's happening younger. Well, we'll talk about that.
Oscar died at 49. It's happening. This is Steve Nissen. He's a well-known CIMT
researcher. It's happening among younger people, obese people. The obesity epidemic
is a major part of that curve going right back up. It's also happening though
among non-smokers and women. This is a woman that had a breast cancer, woman that was
struggling and had a heart attack. She's struggling with changing her health
habits so she doesn't have another one. This is the CDC getting into detail on
where that's happening. It's happening in urban areas. It's happening in small
bedroom communities. Think what you've done with this is amazing. I
know there's others out there that are teaching and talking about heart attack
and stroke prevention. But very few people are really trying to get people
in a room, consumers in a room, and do it. So I want to commend you for that.
It's a great course. Thanks for allowing me to be part of it and talk a little
bit about how dentistry fits in. I really appreciate it, and I really hope people
would come and search this out and take this course.