Future Medicine - 'Closed' Heart Surgery Using Gene Therapy
Tuesday, October 6, 2009 - 16:49
in Health & Medicine
Everyone's heard of open heart surgery but closed heart surgery could one day be just as ubiquitous, according to research from the Universities of Michigan and Minnesota in the FASEB Journal. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, heart failure is a condition where the heart cannot pump enough blood and oxygen to meet the needs of other body organs. Approximately 5 million people in the United States have heart failure, about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, and more than 287,000 people in the United States die each year of heart failure. The most common causes of heart failure are coronary artery disease, hypertension or high blood pressure, and diabetes. read more