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SHAPE Finds USA Today Article Misleading, and Offers Additional Consumer Guidance

Houston, TX (PRWEB) February 27, 2012

In reply to Liz Szabo’s February 21st article (Healthy skepticism….) in USA Today, members of the Scientific Advisory Board of SHAPE – the Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication, feels it is necessary to properly educate healthcare consumers, and to prevent misrepresentation of the latest scientific advancements for heart attack and stroke prevention. Consumers with complete information will have a better chance to draw their own conclusions if they hear factual debates, rather than one sided stories.

SHAPE feels this story promotes the continuance of the ineffective status quo – continuing to do the same things again and again, but expecting different results. Measuring cholesterol and blood pressure is not enough to detect who is at risk of a near future heart attack. In fact, relying solely on traditional risk factors (blood pressure, cholesterol, obesity, etc.) is misleading, and misses a large proportion of asymptomatic high risk (vulnerable) individuals. Non-invasive imaging tests detect hidden plaques, and have consistently shown to provide a more accurate way of cardiovascular risk assessment. If we truly want to empower consumers to take care of their own heart health, they should know their risks and be informed of their choices – unfortunately, the status quo does a very poor job in identifying the asymptomatic vulnerable patients.

If victims of heart attacks and stroke knew their risk in weeks or months prior to the event, they would have been more likely to take preventive measures. In fact, the EISNER Study recently published large randomized clinical trial in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology

(http://content.onlinejacc.org/cgi/content/long/54/14/1258) indicated that once alerted to their true risk of heart attack, high risk and vulnerable yet asymptomatic individuals exhibit higher levels of compliance to therapies than the general population with risk factors who are unaware of their atherosclerotic plaque status, and over a 4 year period showed improvement in overall cardiovascular risk. This alone can have an enormous impact on reducing the incidence of heart attack.

Cardiovascular disease kills 1 of 3 Americans after age 50, and over half of the time, the disease is silent and patients have no idea that they are at risk. Consumers and their primary care / family physicians should take charge of cardiovascular disease prevention and they can do so by knowing if there is hidden plaque in coronary or carotid arteries, which could lead to a heart attack or stroke.

The answers are provided by the two preventive tests which the SHAPE Task Force recommends: Coronary Artery Calcium Scoring using CT scan, and Carotid Artery Intima-Media Thickness (CIMT) including Plaque Detection and Measurement using ultrasound, in patients at intermediate risk based on their combined risk factors. Both are fast, inexpensive, accurate, and non-invasive. The CT has low radiation, and the CIMT has no radiation at all. These procedures were both elevated to strong level 2A status, despite Dr. Nissen’s feelings to the contrary, in November 2011 by the American College of Cardiology and American Heart Association guidelines, as indicated on pages 20 & 23 of: http://my.americanheart.org/idc/groups/ahaecc-internal/@wcm/@sop/documents/downloadable/ucm_423805.pdf

SHAPE is continuing their scientific quest for best practices in heart attack prevention and eradication. Since SHAPE is an educational nonprofit only, there is no agenda for specific practices or procedures – only what is most effective. SHAPE is currently supporting the Department of Health & Human Services Million Heart initiative to prevent over a Million heart attacks over the next 5 years.

About the Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication (SHAPE):

The mission of SHAPE ( http://www.shapesociety.org ) is to eradicate heart attack by championing new strategies for prevention while advancing the scientific quest for a cure. The focus of SHAPE is on the asymptomatic vulnerable patients who are unaware of their risk. SHAPE believes the status quo is unacceptable and must change. In addition to detection of risk factors of atherosclerosis, medical professional must pay attention to atherosclerosis itself. Individuals without alarming risk factors but with hidden plaque (asymptomatic atherosclerosis) must be treated and alerted to their high risk. Through educational programs presented to both healthcare professionals and to the community, SHAPE raises awareness about primary prevention of atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases manifested by heart attack and stroke. The vision of SHAPE is a world free from heart attack.

Members of the SHAPE Scientific Advisory Board include:

Arthur Agatston

Creator – South Beach Diet

Associate Professor of Medicine

University of Miami, Miller School of Medicine

Miami, FL

Daniel S. Berman, M.D.

Director of Cardiac Imaging and of Nuclear

Cardiology at Cedars-Sinai

Los Angeles, CA

Matthew Budoff, M.D.

Vice President, Society of Atherosclerosis Imaging,

Professor of Medicine and Director of Preventive

Cardiology, UCLA Harbor

Los Angeles, CA

Michael H. Davidson, M.D.

FNLA Professor, Director of Preventive Cardiology,

The University of Chicago Pritzker School of

Medicine,

Executive Medical Director, Radiant Research

Chicago, IL

James Ehrlich, M.D.

Clinical Associate Professor

University of Colorado

Denver, CO

Raimund Erbel, M.D.

Professor of Medicine

University of Essen

Director of Department of Cardiology

West German Heart Center

Essen, Germany

Ehrling Falk, M.D.

Department of Interventional Cardiology

Skejby University Hospital

Aarhus, Denmark

Steven B. Feinstein, M.D.

Professor of Medicine and Director of

Echocardiograpy

Division of Cardiology, Rush University Medical

Center

Chicago, IL

Jeff Fine, M.D.

President/CEO

J & J Medical, LLC

Columbia, SC

Craig Hartley

Professor

Baylor College of Medicine

Houston, TX

Harvey S. Hecht, M.D.

Harvey S. Hecht, MD, FACC, FSCCT

Professor of Medicine

Associate Director of Cardiac Imaging

The Mount Sinai Medical Center

New York, NY

Howard Hodis, M.D.

Professor of Cardiology and Preventive Medicine

Professor for Molecular Pharmacology and

Toxicology

Director of Atherosclerosis Research Unit at the

Division of Cardiovascular Medicine

Keck School of Medicine University of Southern

California

Los Angeles, CA

Sanjay Kaul, M.D., M.P.H.

Director, Cardiology Fellowship Training Program

Director, Vascular Physiology and Thrombosis

Research

Laboratory at the Burns and Allen Research Institute

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center

Los Angeles, CA

Iftikhar J. Kullo, M.D.

Professor of Medicine

Division of Cardiovascular Disease

College of Medicine

Mayo Clinic

Rochester, MN

Marge Lovell , R.N., C.C.R.C., C.V.N., B.Ed.        

Clinical Trials Nurse, Vascular Surgery

London Health Sciences Centre

London

Roxana Mehran, M.D.

Professor of Medicine and Director of Interventional

Cardiovascular Research and Clinical Trials, Mount

Sinai Heart, the Zena and Michael A. Wiener

Cardiovascular Institute

Mount Sinai School of Medicine

New York, NY

Ralph Metcalfe

Professor, Mechanical & BioMedical Engineering and Mathematics

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of Houston

Houston, TX

Morteza Naghavi, M.D.

Founding President

Society for Heart Attack Prevention and Eradication

(SHAPE)

CEO, Fairway Medical Technologies, Inc.

Houston, TX

Tasneem Z. Naqvi, M.D.

Professor of Clinical Medicine

Director, Echocardiography Services

Medical Director, Non Invasive Diagnostic Services,

USC Cardiac and Vascular Institute

Keck School of Medicine

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, CA

Paolo Raggi, M.D.

Professor of Medicine and Radiology

Director, Emory Cardiac Imaging Center

Emory University School of Medicine

Atlanta, GA

PK Shah, M.D.

Chairman of SHAPE Scientific Committee

Chief of Cardiology and Director of Atherosclerosis

Research, Cedars Sinai Medical Center

Professor of Medicine at UCLA School of Medicine

Los Angeles, CA

J. David Spence, M.D.

Professor of Neurology and Clinical Pharmacology,

University of Western Ontario

Director of Stroke Prevention & Atherosclerosis

Research Centre,

Robarts Research Institute

London, Ontario

Canada

H. Robert Superko, M.D.

Chief of Medical Affairs – Celera

Adjunct Professor

Mercer University School of Pharmaceutical

Sciences

Atlanta, GA

Pierre-Jean Touboul, M.D.

Professor of Neurology

Department of Neurology and Stroke Center

AP-HP Bichat University Hospital

Neurology and Stroke Center

For additional information, contact:

Jay Donnella

Executive Director

SHAPE

713-529-4484 or 877-SHAPE11 (877-742-7311)

info(at)shapesociety(dot)org

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