The Heart Attack Grill

[namvet]

guess its for real. its on wiki and has its own website. so if your tired of all the health care eat right crap go here

[youtube]koxRy4asAAc[/youtube]

Heart-Attack Restaurant | Oddity Central - Collecting Oddities

 

[eagleseven]

I need to find this place! Amen!

 

[waltky]

Adults with a childhood history of heart defects face problems...

Children Who Survive Congenital Heart Defects Can Face New Problems As Adults
January 28, 2018 - A few weeks ago, our family gathered for a meeting that we hope will save my sister's life. Our goal was to demonstrate to a hospital social worker that we could take care of her should she get a heart transplant.

My sister Sara is now 50. (NPR isn't using her last name to protect her medical privacy.) For her to get on the transplant list, her anatomy needed to be suitable and her antibody levels low despite prior surgeries. She had to show that she could withstand the grueling transplant process; that she could consistently take her anti-rejection medications; didn't abuse drugs or alcohol; and had a stable home life. A heart transplant costs about $1.4 million, according to data from the actuarial firm Milliman. And there aren't enough hearts to go around. Sara had to show that she could pay for three months of living near the hospital for the daily checkups and weekly heart biopsies, as well as the anti-rejection medications she would need daily for the rest of her life. My sister has the most gallant heart of anybody I know. But her patched up heart has been slowly failing over the last three to four years.

She was born a "blue baby" in 1967 with transposition of the great arteries, a relatively common but serious heart defect, which deprived her body of oxygenated blood. In a procedure called a Blalock-Taussig shunt, her doctors made a small hole in her heart to allow oxygenated blood to mix with the other blood in her body. At that point, that was the only option. The doctors told our mother to keep her alive until they improved surgical techniques enough to operate again. She was a spindly toddler with purple lips and fingertips. During those years, she couldn't do much, and we would pull her around in a red Radio Flyer wagon. In 1972, when Sara was a kindergartner, surgeons performed a Mustard procedure, attempting to reroute her blood flow. It was an incomplete fix, but her lips and fingers turned pink. Of the three cardiac surgeries performed in the hospital that week, she was the only child to survive.

Sara's nephew and Wendy's son Benny painted this image of a heart that hangs in the author's home.​

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 percent of children, about 40,000 babies, are born with congenital heart defects a year in the U.S., ranging from simple conditions that don't even need surgery to life-threatening problems like my sister's. "It is the No. 1 birth defect," says Dr. Michael Landzberg, director of the Boston Adult Congenital Heart program. Out of those children with a congenital heart problem, an estimated 5 to 7 percent — about 1,250 babies a year — are born with some variation of transposition, like my sister. According to Landzberg, because of improved medical care, by the 1980s and 1990s more children with serious congenital heart disease were surviving to adulthood. Programs sprouted at major medical centers to provide specialized care and train doctors to deal with this growing population with complex medical needs, who also needed to deal with finding insurance and employment, having children or simply finding a swimsuit that hid the surgical scars.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Landzberg in his tiny office filled with textbooks. He thought I looked familiar. We had never met; it was my sister he remembered. She and her husband had consulted with him to ask if it would be safe for her to become pregnant. I told him that her son was a middle schooler now. Landzberg's face lit up. Landzberg advocates lifetime follow-up for all children born with congenital heart disease. About half only need occasional checkups by their physician under the guidance of an adult congenital heart disease specialist, he says, but the rest need to be monitored more frequently directly by a specialist. Landzberg noted that between the ages of 18 and 25, these patients' mortality risk due to their hearts' anatomical limitations may double or even quadruple, depending upon the severity of their condition. Increasing age intensifies the effect on the heart and body of physiological stressors such as growth spurts, exercise and pregnancy, as well as infections, surgeries and other diseases.

MORE

See also:

Survivors Of Childhood Diseases Struggle To Find Care As Adults
June 21, 2017 - Rachael Goldring was born with congenital heart disease. Had she been born a few decades earlier, she probably would have died as a baby. Goldring is now 24 and among a population of patients who present new challenges to a health care system unaccustomed to dealing with survivors of once-fatal conditions.

Today there are more adults than kids living with some of these diseases, and medical training is lagging. Young adults who can't find suitable doctors may drop out of care, and their conditions may worsen. Goldring's condition was pulmonary atresia with tetralogy of Fallot. She was born without a pulmonary valve directing blood from her heart to her lungs. It's the condition that talk show host Jimmy Kimmel's baby was born with this spring. "I had my first surgery when I was 9 months," Goldring says. "Now, they do it from birth." Her condition has also meant three more surgeries, a heart valve from a cadaver, complicated secondary diseases and a lifetime in and out of doctors' offices. "I just celebrated my one-year anniversary of staying out of the hospital for the first time since birth," Goldring says. "So, this year, knock on wood, it's been amazing."

But she fears it might not last. Right now, she is in limbo between pediatric and adult medical care. For Goldring, finding a good doctor could be a matter of life and death. Today, survivors of congenital heart disease can live well past childhood. Dr. Patrick Burke, a pediatrician at Valley Children's Healthcare in Madera, Calif., says other once-fatal ailments like sickle cell disease and spina bifida have undergone similar advances. "This is the so-called medical miracle promised to our parents and grandparents," Burke says, adding that miracle kids like Goldring grow up to be complicated adults. "The job's not done after the surgery or the initial treatment. Many if not most of these conditions require ongoing medical care — lifelong medical care."

As a child, Rachael Goldring had multiple open-heart surgeries to treat her congenital heart disease. At 24, she still sees pediatricians because she has had difficulty finding the right care in adult medicine.​

Burke is in charge of a new program at his hospital in the new field of "transitional care." He says many conditions worsen around age 18, right as children age out of pediatric care. For instance, he says, that is when patients with congenital heart disease suffer complications with their blood and organs. The trend is particularly stark for cystic fibrosis. "We're seeing this spike of deaths that are happening in the early 20s. And it's bizarre," he says. Dr. Megumi Okumura, a pediatrician with the University of California, San Francisco, became interested in this transition during her residency in the early 2000s. She would see 40- and 50-year-olds in pediatric wards. The reason, she says, partly lies with a fragmented health care system. "They are transferring from differing systems of care," she says, noting the silos that separate pediatric care from adult care. "We have different funding streams and programs."

Now, Okumura and other researchers are looking for ways to remove what she considers artificial barriers. Clinics around the world are trying out new strategies such as giving nonpediatric doctors more training or bringing in transitional specialists to connect young adults who are chronically ill with new providers. A relatively new fellowship track even trains doctors to work specifically with adults with congenital heart disease. Goldring is fortunate in that she can remain with her pediatricians until she finds the right adult provider. She's working on it, but at the moment, she's much more focused on another transition: She'll be getting married in October.

Survivors Of Childhood Diseases Struggle To Find Care As Adults

 

[Skull Pilot]