heart attack

Leaked from today's 404 episode:

- Heart Attack Grill spokesman dies of heart attack.

- Two Atlanta women left with third-degree burns after Instagram feud fuels hot oil attack.

- Apple reportedly testing curved glass for 'iWatch.'

- CBS stations stop Tweeting about Dorner.

Bathroom break video: Beatboxing and studying the SATs… Read more

After researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine called on the general public to find as many of Philadelphia's estimated 5,000 automated external defibrillators as possible, more than 300 "citizen scientists" stepped up and located 1,429 of them in more than 525 buildings across the city.

The eight-week crowdsourcing contest, called MyHeartMap Challenge, is part of what the researchers hope will be a national effort to catalog as many AEDs as possible and develop an interactive app of the registry so that laypeople can act quickly in the event someone nearby … Read more

Researchers at the University of Liverpool say they have developed a new imaging technique that will help them identify, and thus analyze, tissue fibers in the heart that control whether the muscle beats regularly.

Using a micro CT scanner, the team imaged hearts whose tissue had been highlighted using iodine. The scientists discovered that certain tissue -- the conducting tissue that sends an electrical wave to trigger each heartbeat -- absorbed less of the solution than the muscular tissue.

This contrast made it easier to identify which tissue was producing electrical activity in 3D, which has until this study had … Read more

In an effort to quickly and efficiently map the roughly 5,000 automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in public areas of Philadelphia, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine recently launched a contest to award $10,000 to the team or person who finds the most.

With the six-week contest, which kicked off in late January, nearing its March 13 deadline, researchers are already planning to conduct a similar, nationwide challenge.

AEDs can save the lives of those suffering cardiac arrests via electric shocks, particularly if used in the first minutes following the onset of the attack. … Read more

Shortly before Christmas, teenager Ben Breedlove, creator of the YouTube channel BreedloveTV, posted a two-part video about his lifelong heart condition, hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. It was the high school senior's most serious video and would prove to be his last.

On Christmas morning, while playing with his younger brother in the family's backyard, Breedlove succumbed to the condition that causes a thickening of heart muscle, went into cardiac arrest, and died.

In the days following, Breedlove's final two videos--in which he does not say a word but cycles through a series of flash cards to the music "… Read more

OK, I'll come out and admit the blushingly obvious: the above screenshot reveals which chest I chose. But I shouldn't feel guilty, right? I've just learned how to give hands-only CPR!

The American Heart Association's "Hands-Only CPR" campaign is officially in full-force. After issuing new guidelines in October 2010 that, in adults, rapid chest compressions without rescue breathing is the way to go, it threw a lot of weight behind its hands-only campaign, which boasts press releases, catchy YouTube videos, an app, and so on.

According to the new guidelines, a bystander should compress … Read more

When a 54-year-old man collapsed outside a grocery store on a cold winter's night in rural Minnesota recently, a bystander and a trained first responder who happened to be nearby came together to administer CPR.

Five minutes later, paramedics arrived, continued the CPR, and over the course of the next half-hour delivered six defibrillation shocks.

Then a Mayo Clinic flight crew arrived by helicopter, and they proceeded to administer advanced CPR on the still-pulseless patient. After delivering a total of 11 shocks, the team still couldn't get a pulse, so they upped the drugs, did CPR for two more minutes, and delivered the final, twelfth shock.… Read more

The adoption of electronic medical records, or EMRs, in U.S. hospitals has improved the quality of care in only one of three areas studied, and even in that area, the gains are limited, according to new research by the nonprofit Rand published this week in the American Journal of Managed Care.

Researchers analyzed the quality of care at 2,021 hospitals between 2003 and 2007 across three conditions: pneumonia, heart attack, and heart failure. The number of hospitals using either basic or advanced EMRs grew from 24 percent in 2003 to 38 percent in 2006.

Not only did the … Read more

Many of us know someone who has experienced severe chest pain but hemmed and hawed over whether to go to the emergency room. The ultimate hope is that the pain will just pass.

The rule of thumb has been to just go--better safe than sorry. But only 20 percent of those who do go actually have heart attacks, so researchers at the Stanford Cardiac Rehabilitation Program have developed a 3- to 5-minute survey that can be administered by a health care professional that helps identify symptoms, level of heart attack risk, and whether a trip to the ER is necessary.… Read more