Individual Care
Cardiovascular diseases, namely heart attack and stroke, remain the greatest killers of men and women worldwide – accounting for one-third of all annual deaths. This demographic has not changed in over 80 years! Clearly, the medical establishment’s current approach to this disease are not making enough of an impact.
Currently, most approaches to detecting and treating cardiovascular disease rely on a REACTIVE rather than a PROACTIVE approach, waiting for symptoms to occur, at which time treatment may be too late, and is certainly much more difficult and invasive. Furthermore, many of the testing modalities used by conventional cardiologists are based on outdated disease paradigms. It is now established that cardiovascular abnormalities resulting in, and pre-dating morbid events are detectable in the arteries before the development of symptomatic disease.
Heart attack and stroke are NOT syndromes that suddenly arise “overnight”, and cardiovascular disease does not start at the point in time when these events actually occur, or even when initial symptoms develop.
Fifty percent of heart attacks in the US occur in people with traditionally defined “normal” cholesterol – people who would therefore likely fall through the cracks and not have further cardiovascular testing. Furthermore, 50% of men and 64% of women are asymptomatic when they have their first heart attack. Unfortunately, in 30%-40% of patients who have a heart attack, the first symptom is sudden death. Based on reliable statistics, approximately 48% of our population currently has some degree of cardiovascular disease – despite the fact that it may not yet be clinically evident.
Advances in noninvasive techniques for studying the blood vessels now provide the opportunity to use actual detection of the earliest stages of disease, rather than simply risk factors as the tool for clinical decision making. It is known that the over reliance upon existing and traditionally used population-based cardiovascular disease risk factor based scores frequently results in significant misclassification (in over 50% of people) of patients determined to be at intermediate to high risk, and may miss people that are thought to be at low risk. This is because risk factors are not the actual disease, and basing clinical decisions solely on them results in what amounts to a crude and imprecise approach to decision making. PCNY treats the patient – not a “number”. We are able to identify cardiovascular risk and disease often 10-20 years before conventional cardiologists with our cutting-edge tests, many of which are only available at PCNY.
It is of paramount importance to the health of our populace to identify and manage cardiovascular disease before it becomes advanced. Preventive Cardiology of New York can achieve these outcomes through its advanced, individualized testing, and unique protocols.
We provide extensively well-validated current, 1-, 5-, and 10-year cardiovascular risk assessments, and develop ongoing short, intermediate, and long-term treatment plans based upon those metrics. The earlier cardiovascular disease is discovered, the more successful interventions will be, often permitting the patient to stave off an adverse or morbid event entirely, or until much later in life. Cardiovascular disease is an eminently manageable health issue when able to be diagnosed early and treated aggressively and properly.
In summary, comprehensive and truly proactive management of cardiovascular disease is a major part of the solution to lowering the cost of healthcare in this country, while significantly improving morbidity and mortality. Preventive Cardiology of New York provides the most in-depth cardiovascular analysis in the industry and is ready to partner with you to achieve your healthcare goals.