BROKEN HEARTS 123After all, heart disease is still our number one cause of death. Every
twenty-four hours, almost 2,000 Americans will die from this disease.^2
For all the advances, there are a huge number of people still succumb-
ing to broken hearts.
In fact, the incidence rate (not death rate) for heart disease^29 is about
the same as it was in the early 1970s.^2 In other words, while we don't
die as much from heart disease, we still get it as often as we used to. In
seems that we simply have gotten slightly better at postponing death
from heart disease, but we have done nothing to stop the rate at which our
hearts become diseased.SURGERY: THE PHANTOM SAVIOR
The mechanical interventions that we use in this country are much less
effective than most people realize. Bypass surgery has become particu-
larly popular. As many as 380,000 bypass operations were performed
in 1990 ,3° meaning that about lout of 750 Americans underwent this
extreme surgery. During the operation, the patient's chest is split open,
blood flow is rerouted by a series of clamps, pumps and machines, and
a leg vein or chest artery is cut out and sewn over a diseased part of the
heart, thereby allowing blood to bypass the most clogged arteries.
The costs are enormous. More than one of every fifty elective patients
will die because of complications3 1 during the $46,000 procedure.^32
Other side effects include heart attack, respiratory complications, bleed-
ing complications, infection, high blood pressure and stroke. When the
vessels around the heart are clamped shut during the operation, plaque
breaks off of the inner walls. Blood then carries this debris to the brain,
where it causes numerous "mini" strokes. Researchers have compared
the intellectual capabilities of patients before and after the operation,
and found that a stunning 79% of patients "showed impairment in some
aspect of cognitive function" seven days after the operation.^33
Why do we put ourselves through this? The most pronounced ben-
efit of this procedure is relief of angina, or chest pain. About 70-80% of
patients who undergo bypass surgery remain free of this crippling chest
pain for one year.^34 But this benefit doesn't last. Within three years of the
operation, up to one-third of patients will suffer from chest pain again.^35
Within ten years half of the bypass patients will have died, had a heart
attack or had their chest pain return.^36 Long-term studies indicate that
only certain subsets of heart disease patients live longer because of their
bypass operationY Furthermore, these studies demonstrate that those