News at LifeScore® - 2003
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12/12/03 - Dr. Michael
Wright appeared on Channel 8 news at 4:30 and 6:00 pm to
discuss ways of preventing the flu. He discussed vaccinations as well
as the anti-viral compounds Symmetrel (amantadine) and Tamiflu (oseltamivir).
12/10/03 - An original
research article by Dr. Matthew Allison and Dr. Michael Wright has
been accepted for publication in the Journal of Arteriosclerosis,
Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. The article is entitled
"Patterns and Risk Factors for Systemic Calcified Atherosclerosis"
 To
read the article, follow this link
112/3/03 - Dr. Tabita Wright
appeared on KUSI evening news on 12-2-03 to discuss a new
research article appearing in the 12-04-03 issue of the prestigious
New England Journal of Medicine. The article reports the results of
a study comparing virtual colonoscopy to optical colonoscopy. Virtual
colonoscopy performed better than traditional colonoscopy. Two cancerous
polyps were found, one of which was missed on traditional colonoscopy.
To
read the article, follow this link
November 20 was the Great American Smoke
Out Day! - This yearly event is designed to help smokers
quit. Dr. Wright appeared on Channel 9 News, Channel 8 News, and the
Christy and Jagger radio show to talk about the harmful effects of
cigarette smoking, and the best strategies for quitting.
Click here
to download the LifeScore "Up in Smoke" poster, which provides
a powerful visual statement on the health risks of cigarettes.
10/26/03 - Dr. Wright unveiled
his new Food
Pyramid this week. The pyramid presents in a pleasant
visual fashion all the key components of a cardioprotective and cancer
protective diet. It is divided into sections for what to eat at every
meal, what to eat daily, what to eat weekly and what to eat rarely.
Adherence to its principles is the foundation for a long and healthy
life. More
Medical Information
10/10/03 -
Dr. Wright spoke on the air with Jeff & Jer during their popular
morning talk show. Jer has been to the LifeScore Clinic twice for
preventive scanning. He asked Dr. Wright to comment on the recent
death of John Ritter and Robert Palmer, and whether the LifeScore
scans could have predicted their medical problems.
Dr. Wright responded that both John Ritter's aortic
dissection and Robert Palmer's heart attack would have had prior signs
of a potential problem on a scan well in advance of their tragic deaths.
Both Mr. Ritter and Mr. Palmer were in their early
50's, and their deaths underscore the importance of scanning to look
for asymptomatic atherosclerosis, the underlying disease responsible
for most heart attacks, strokes and other vascular emergencies.
10/3/03 - Two recent articles further document the
power of the HeartScore test: an article in the American Journal of
Cardiology involving follow-up of 18,000 patients demonstrated that
people in the highest 25% of calcium scores had up to a 33 fold increase
in risk for having clinically significant coronary artery disease
download
PDF article
No other risk factor is even close in terms of predictive
power. An article in the journal Radiology involving over 10,000 patients
showed that age and coronary artery calcium were the two most powerful
predictors of future cardiavascular risk
download PDF article
9/29/03 - On Sunday, 9/28/03, Dr.
Wright appeared several times on Channel 10 news to discuss women
and heart disease. Women, on average, develop heart disease
10-15 years later than men, but suffer much more serious consequences
when they do have their first heart attack.
Click
here to download the LifeScore Clinic Guide to Women and Cardiovascular
Disease.
9/17/03 - The Spring/Summer
issue of the International Journal of Cardiology contains an article
written by Dr. Allison and Dr. Wright. The article discusses
the relationship between LDL cholesterol and coronary calcification.
Please follow the link if you would like to download a copy of the
article. Click
here to download the article
9/7/03 - Dr. Wright appeared
on both Channel 8 News on September 5 and Channel 9 News on September
6 to discuss the recent tragic death of John Ritter. Mr.
Ritter died suddenly from a tear in his aorta just above the heart.
Such a tear is a relatively rare event, but is generally caused by
a weakening of the aortic artery wall over several years. The most
common risk factor is high blood pressure. A CAT scan, such as the
one at the LifeScore Clinic, is the best way to diagnose the condition.
Most cases occur in people aged 50 to 70. The event is often fatal
because the tear allows blood to track down towards the heart, where
it can cause a heart attack or a collapsing of the heart chambers.
9/2/03 - On Monday, September
1st, Dr. Wright appeared on KUSI channel 9 early afternoon news
show to discuss fats in the diet and the Omega Diet. He talked about
which fats are harmful and which fats are healthy.
Please click here
to download the LifeScore Clinic guide to fats called 'Where's
the Fat?'.
8/4/03
- Do you know how much salt is in your foods? Americans consume
thousands of more milligrams per day of sodium than they need. The
long term consequences include high blood pressure, strokes, heart
attacks, osteoporosis and stomach cancer. Dr. Wright appeared on KUSI
Channel 9 Midday news to discuss the hidden salt in foods.
Download the LifeScore
Clinic salt poster
7/31/03 - Do you know an older
driver who may be an accident waiting to happen? Dr. Wright was interviewed
by TV Channel 8's Nichelle Medina about the new American Medical Association
older driver safety guide. The guide provides a huge amount of valuable
information for physicians and lay people.
Click
here to learn more
7/17/03 - Planning to travel
by plane this summer? Check out Dr. Wright's story for KFMB
TV on the risks for leg vein clots and what you can do to prevent
them.
Click
here to to learn more
7/24/03 - Dr. Wright appeared
on San Diego Fox News Channel 6 to explain a revolutionary
advance in insulin pumps. Sandra Moss visited the Lifescore clinic
to learn about the Medtronics Paradigm 512, which can receive a short
wave radio signal from a special glucose monitor and more accurately
calculate insulin needs.
Click
here to to learn more.
7/15/03
- Ozzie Roberts, feature writer for the San Diego
Union Tribune, captures the human side of Drs. Michael and
Tabita Wright in the 7/15/03 issue. He describes the improbable
circumstances that brought them together 27 years ago in France.
Details
7/9/03 - Dr. Wright appeared
on the local NBC TV 7 news at 10 am on Wednesday to discuss
the recent endorsement by the American Heart Association of hypothermia
(lowering the body temperature) treatment after cardiac arrest.
Information
about Hypothermia
6/30/03 - Dr. Wright appeared
on Fox News to discuss the implications of a new concept-
the polypill. British researchers estimate that if everyone over the
age of 55 took the pill, 88% of heart attacks and 80% of strokes would
be prevented.
Details
6/24/03 - " A Wall Street Journal lead
article on June 24, 2003, entitled ' Five Tests Worth Paying For',
discusses critically important medical tests that are not covered
by insurance. Four of the five tests are offered by the LifeScore
Clinic.
Details
6/23/03 -Dr. Wright Appears on KFMB TV,
Channel 8 in San Diego to discuss the recent approval the
first biotechnology product to treat patients with a type of asthma
that is related to allergies.
Click
here to read the FDA's press release for the approval ofthe new
drug, Xolair, manufactured by Genentech and jointly marketed by Novartis
Pharmaceutical Corporation.
6/16/03 - The June 16, 2003 issue of Newsweek
has a special report on Men's Health. The lead article is
on the heart, and features a discussion of EBT and other newer technologies
for discovering cardiac risk.
Click
here to view a PDF version of this article.
5/13/03 - Scan Predicts
Heart Trouble in the Healthy
By Ed Edelson, HealthScoutNews Reporter
(HealthScoutNews) -- Put to the test, an imaging device called an
electron beam computed tomography did warn of future cardiovascular
trouble in healthy, seemingly trouble-free individuals.
"Half of deaths due to heart disease occur
in people with no symptoms," says a statement by Dr. George T.
Kondos, head of the team that did the test. "And a third of people
with heart disease don't have any of the traditional risk factors
-- diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, family history
or peripheral vascular disease. Those individuals would go undetected
by traditional screening methods."
Electron beam computed tomography (also known as
EBCT or EBT) detects a different source of trouble -- calcium deposits
in artery walls that can eventually be blocked, causing a heart attack
or stroke. It is a fast form of X-ray imaging technology that can
be done in a few minutes. And the amount of those calcium deposits
did predict trouble, says a report in the May 13 issue of Circulation.
More than 5,600 men and women were given the test
by Kondos, who is an associate professor of medicine at the University
of Illinois' College of Medicine in Chicago. They were divided into
four groups, depending on the extent of calcium deposits found by
an EBCT scan.
Over the next three and a half years, men in the
highest quarter of calcium scores were 2.3 times more likely to die
or have a heart attack and 10.1 times more likely to have bypass surgery
or artery-clearing angioplasty than those in the lowest quarter, the
report says. There were no comparable figures on deaths and heart
attacks for women, because few of them occurred, but the incidence
of bypass surgery or angioplasty was 3.6 times higher for those in
the highest quarter compared to those in the lowest.
"This is an important advance in the study
of this technology," says Dr. Patrick G. O'Malley, an EBCT expert
and chief of the division of general and internal medicine at Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
The research helps resolve a running debate on EBCT's
effectiveness. "It is an open question whether it can predict
over and above the conventional risk factors," O'Malley says.
O'Malley led a recently published study showing
that EBCT readings must be followed up by doctors to make sure persons
with high scores pay careful attention to the conventional risk factors
to prevent heart attack and stroke"
Copyright (c) 2003 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.
Click
here to read this story on the San Diego Channel 10 News web site
4/25/03 - LifeScore featured
in the April 21, 2003 San Diego Business Journal, the community's
leading source for business news, as part of the Small Business Spotlight
section.
 A
CLOSER LOOK AT PULMONARY EMBOLISM
From KFMB.COM, Channel 8 San Diego
(04-07-2003) - David bloom was 39 years old. To
most of us, that's relatively young. But according to a local expert,
out in the midst of combat, age may have been a risk factor in David
Bloom's death.
David bloom filed his last TV report on Friday,
and on Sunday everything seemed normal.
He called the NBC offices, asked for the final four
basketball scores. Then he called his wife on his cell phone. A few
minutes after that call, he collapsed - a pulmonary embolism is to
blame.
"A pulmonary embolism is a blood clot to the
lungs," said Cardiologist Michael Wright.
And that clot, according to Dr. Wright, led to serious
problems inside Bloom's body.
It probably started in his leg, traveled up through
his heart and ended by blocking off blood flow to his lung.
"That means, suddenly a lot of the blood going
back to one side of your heart is not being oxygenated so your body
realizes you're not getting enough oxygen so the first thing you're
gonna feel is shortness of breath," said Dr. Wright.
Bloom spoke about the conditions he was under in
his live reports from the field. Most days, he was sleeping in a small
vehicle, with his knees to his chest.
"So here he is in some kind of cramped quarters,
but he probably couldn't move very much for maybe 3 to 4 days. Well
all you need is a long plane trip to have something like this happen,
so if he's in this cramped position for 2 to 3 days that's plenty
of time for something like this to occur," said Dr. Wright.
To top it off, Bloom had a few years on most of
the troops he was travelling alongside.
"He's a good, probably 10 to 15 years older
than a lot of soldiers going through this. And as you get older your
veins tend to become less competent. We have one way valves in our
veins and as we get older the valves fail and blood tends to go both
ways and tends to pool down in your legs," said Dr. Wright. "The
stress of being in the battlefield, adrenaline pumping tends to make
your blood clot more easily, there's a lot of different conditions
that could have combined to cause this for him."
Dr. Wright says pulmonary embolisms are fairly common.
About 125,000 people get them each year and 20 percent of the time
they are fatal.
There are some risk factors you should be aware
of. They include taking birth control pills, smoking, long bed-rest
after surgery, hip fractures, pregnancy, and even cancer.
If you take a long plane trip or car ride, Dr. Wright
advises that you take a break every hour and walk a bit to keep that
blood flowing properly.
4/3/03 - Heart Scan
May Be Better Than Standard Risk Factors at Estimating Heart Disease
Risk
(CHICAGO)-A widely available heart imaging test
is far more accurate than such standard measures as cholesterol levels
and blood pressure at predicting cardiovascular risk in apparently
healthy persons, according to prospective study.
In the St. Francis Heart Study, 4,620 such persons
underwent a heart scanning procedure called electron-beam computed
tomography, or EBCT. The low-energy x-ray imaging test was used to
identify and measure heart-vessel calcium deposits. Larger amounts
of calcium on EBCT scans have been linked to increased risk of future
cardiovascular events.
The multicenter study confirmed the ability of EBCT
to predict future risk: the more calcium on the scan, the more likely
the patient was to experience an atherosclerosis-related event such
as heart attack, angioplasty, or stroke during the next four years.
"The EBCT-derived calcium scores predicted
atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease events with unprecedented accuracy,"
said Dr. Alan D. Guerci, St. Francis Hospital, Roslyn, N.Y. The heart
scans were significantly more accurate than the array of standard
criteria typically used to assess cardiovascular risk in patients
currently without heart disease. Those criteria include cholesterol
levels, blood pressure, body mass index, age, and whether or not the
person is a smoker.
Dr. Guerci is scheduled to present the results of
the St. Francis Heart Study here at 9:00 a.m. on Wednesday, April
2, at the American College of Cardiology 52nd Annual Scientific Session.
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4/3/03
- Statin Therapy Cuts Heart Attack, Stroke Risk in Hypertensive Patients
(CHICAGO)-TPatients with an increased likelihood
of suffering a heart attack or stroke due to high blood pressure can
dramatically decrease their risk receiving treatment with the cholesterol-lowering
drug atorvastatin, even if their total cholesterol levels are not
considered high, according to a large randomized trial.
In the Anglo-Scandinavian Cardiac Outcomes Trial
(ASCOT), 10,297 patients with hypertension, low-to-normal risk total
cholesterol levels, and no history of heart attack randomly received
either atorvastatin or placebo for five years. The trial was stopped
prematurely after a mean 3.2 years when the patients receiving atorvastatin
showed an approximately one-third reduction in risk of nonfatal heart
attacks and cardiac death, the primary endpoint. The risk of stroke,
a secondary endpoint, was reduced by about one-fourth.
"The most striking feature of ASCOT was the
rapidity with which the benefit in coronary disease and stroke outcome
was seen," said Dr. Peter S. Sever, Imperial College School of
Medicine, London, U.K. Few major trials, if any, have explored whether
a cholesterol-lowering drug therapy can prevent a first heart attack
in patients with hypertension.
The ASCOT cholesterol-lowering-drug comparison is
part of a larger trial of nearly 20,000 patients that also tested
two treatments for high blood pressure in a separate randomization.
That phase of the trial has yet to be completed.
Dr. Sever is slated to present the ASCOT trial's
statin-therapy findings here at 8:45 a.m. on Wednesday, April 2, at
the American College of Cardiology 52nd Annual Scientific Session.
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4/3/03
- Banning Smoking from Public Places Reduces Community Heart Attack
Rates
(CHICAGO)-Local laws banning smoking in workplaces
and public areas can greatly reduce the number of heart attacks that
occur in the community, a study has demonstrated for the first time.
Investigators in Helena, Montana, compared heart-attack
rates over the four years before and six months after a local Clean
Indoor Air ordinance took effect in June, 2002.
"We took advantage of the fact that there is
single hospital in the region that treats heart-attack patients,"
said Dr. Richard P. Sargent, St. Peter's Community Hospital, Helena,
Mont.. The city, with a population of about 66,000, is about 60 miles
from the closest other hospital.
"The passage of a local indoor smoke-free-air
ordinance was associated with a significant 45% reduction in heart
attack incidence for people living in the Helena region as compared
to the surrounding areas," said Dr. Sargent. "The effect
of eliminating second-hand smoke exposure on admissions for myocardial
infarction was immediate and sustained."
The discovery, said Dr. Sargent, adds to established
evidence that 1) long-term second-hand exposure to cigarette smoke
can increase the risk of heart disease and 2) short-term exposure
causes changes in the blood that can make heart attacks more likely.
He is slated to present the study's results here at 8:30 a.m., Tuesday,
April 1, at the American College of Cardiology 52nd Annual Scientific
Session.
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2/25/03 - Dr. Wright interviewed on KUSI TV Morning
News about the recent Ephedra deaths. The key issued discussed included:
- Ephedra is a mild stimulant related to amphetamines,
which can raise blood pressure and heart rate, and speeds up body
metabolism.
- $1-2 billion a year spent on herbal supplements
with ephedra.
- Approx 5 million bottles of supplements a month
sold with ephedra.
- 1 serious case per month reported to FDA with
ephedra as a possibly contributing cause.
- Cardiac arrest reported rarely but involves young
otherwise healthy people exercising intensely after taking herbal
supplements with ephedra.
- Bottom Line- Avoid
ephedra-containing herbal supplements with more than 8mg/dose and
with caffeine or other stimulants combined.
01/10/03 - Two LifeScore research studies
have been accepted for presentation at the American Heart Association’s
annual Council on Epidemiology and Prevention to take place in March
2003 in Miami, Florida. The study titles are: 1. “Patterns
of Calcified Atherosclerosis” and 2. “Age and Gender Distribution
of Carotid Calcification”
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01/17/03 - One LifeScore research study
has been accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the American
College of Preventive Medicine in February 2003 in San Diego.
The study is entitled “Comparing HDL and LDL Cholesterol as
Predictors for Coronary Calcification.”
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