I'm back on the blogs, if anyone is reading! During this hiatus we have redone the format and we hope you think it's for the better.
In this series, I've been sharing some of my experience with a mini-stroke, a PFO that was fixed with a cardiac occluder, and the surprise insertion of a drug-eluting stent in my left anterior descending artery. I also talked a little about diet.
Now I can say that I've lost about 30 pounds in the process that have not returned as yet. One might say that I am merely skin and bones at this time but my doctor seems pleased.
This coming Monday my cardiologists wants me to have a stress test. Apparently that means running on a tread mill until one minute before I collapse. (How in the world will I know??) Then they'll be taking before and after pictures of blood flow in the cardiac vascular system.
Why did he order this test? I can only speculate and my meager and limited knowledge of this history may be wrong. But what I gather is that the rapid surge of usage of the drug-eluting form of stents followed the dramatic results of virtually no blockages six months following stent insertion compared with non-drug-eluting stents. About a year ago, however, more detailed analyses showed that blockages did start to occur from 9 months after inserting drug-eluting stents. The usage of drug-eluting versions suddenly plummeted from aroun 90% of all stents to about 40%.
I may be wrong, but I suspect this may be why my cardiologist wanted a stress test at 8 months. At least to get a baseline reference at that point.
We'll see what happens.
Randy