Cardiology director says there's one heart measure Sanders could disclose but isn't Exclusive: By releasing one simple indicator of his heart health, Sanders could address lingering questions, the president of the American College of Cardiology says. Bernie Sanders at a Get Out the Early Vote campaign rally in Santa Ana, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2020.Mike Blake / Reuters Feb. 24, 2020, 3:00 PM CST By Heidi Przybyla WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has resisted calls to release additional medical information in the wake of a heart attack he suffered in October. "We have released as much" medical information "as any other candidate," the Vermont senator told NBC News' "Meet the Press" earlier this month. When pressed on whether he would release more, Sanders responded that, "you can start releasing medical records and it never ends." But by releasing one simple indicator of his heart health, Sanders could address some lingering questions, the president of the American College of Cardiology, Richard Kovacs, tells NBC News. Following Sanders’ heart attack, doctors inserted two stents in an artery and he was hospitalized for several days. After promising to release “comprehensive” records after the procedure, his campaign balked, saying no more information would be forthcoming. Full Sanders: 'I am in good health' won't release additional medical records FEB. 9, 202010:59 “We released the full report of that heart attack,” Sanders said at last week's NBC News/MSNBC debate, pointing to letters from three doctors the campaign distributed in December, which are not the same as medical records. Kovacs, who reviewed the letters for NBC News, said they omit a “standard” measure of Sanders’ heart health. That indicator, called the left ventricular ejection fraction, is provided to any patient after a heart attack, Kovacs said. It’s a measure of how much blood volume the heart pushes out with an individual heartbeat and it correlates with the risk for future cardiac events and mortality rate. “Normally the heart will push out 60 percent,” Kovacs said. “If you go down to 40 or 50 percent, we regard that as mild impairment of the left ventricle. Thirty to 40 percent would be moderate. If you get to 30 percent, that would be severe.” Sanders hasn’t revealed what the number was at the time of his heart attack nor what it is today. Campaign spokesman Mike Casca, responding to questions from NBC News, declined to provide the ejection fraction number to NBC. The doctors’ letters “are pretty comprehensive,” Casca told NBC News. The letters, Kovacs said, “imply with the heart attack that he (Sanders) had diminished heart muscle strength,” or a lowered fraction. Still, the letters provided by his doctors also suggest he’s improved since then. “Full transparency would be to release his ejection fraction,” agreed Dr. Hadley Wilson, an ACC board trustee and cardiologist at the Sanger Heart & Vascular Institute in Charlotte, North Carolina. “A subsequent stress test in January and the other information about his clinical response were all very positive and encouraging,” Wilson said. “I don’t really know” why Sanders wouldn’t release it, he added, offering that it could be over concern it could be “misconstrued” in the broader clinical picture. “It is an important baseline but it does have to be taken into the whole clinical context,” including the fact that Sanders hasn’t had additional incidents, which is all positive, he said. Sanders is not a patient of Kovacs and Kovacs said he would not comment specifically on his condition. But he did note that presidents routinely release the results of similar health benchmarks like cholesterol and colonoscopy readings. “It’s a patient’s personal private information but there’s the importance of the number,” Kovacs said. One letter released by the campaign, from University of Vermont cardiologist Martin LeWinter, called Sanders’ heart function “stable and well preserved” but omits the number. “I don’t know what that means but it’s not the ejection fraction which is just a simple number,” Kovacs said. “They’ve chosen not to reveal the ejection fraction.” In another letter, Brian Monahan, attending physician at the U.S. Capitol and Sanders’ primary care doctor, said Sanders is in “good health” and that he has stopped taking several medications that were required after the heart attack. Yet the ejection fraction rate would be a good indicator of the progress of Sanders’ recovery, Kovacs said. “That is a number that we routinely obtain that is important for guiding therapy," Kovacs said. "I say here is your ejection fraction and here’s what we will need to do down the line.”
Well he will probably pick Stacey Abrams as his Veep so we will end up with her vast leadership experience to guide us if Bernie departs this mortal veil.
Trump Went for a Medical Checkup That Was Not on His Public Schedule The White House said that the president wanted to get a head start on portions of his annual physical exam and that he was in good health. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/us/politics/-trump-annual-physical.html
Be lucky if she doesn't have a heart attack too. She needs to lose a hundred or so pounds unless she is part of some beefalo breeding project.
Interesting choice of words. Where did you get that? This girl used it in a song. Its a beautiful video. Plink through it. Start at 5:00. She used those words at 4:40. Good words...
I guess its a botched version of "shuffle off this mortal coil" from Shakespeare's Hamlet. I probably heard it in a movie lol. I had not heard Dante's Prayer before tonight.
Even more reason to vote for Sanders. He's the worst commie in the US I'm told, so his running mate would be an upgrade if he keeled over, just like Trump
If he picks her or anyone near that goofy it's a landslide for Trump victory. It's pretty much a given he doesn't complete his term which means his V.P. choice is essentially the presidential candidate. An Abrams pick brings nothing new to his support, adds zero votes that he already isn't going to get. What it does it drive all the fence sitters to Trump. If he's serious about winning then the V.P. needs to have some grasp on reality, be a bit more palatable to the average American, and most of all brings in independent voters.