Health Education

According to the latest statistics, among the top 10 order of mortality for Taiwanese people since 2012, heart disease (except for hypertension related diseases) is the major cause of death following malignant tumor, which is apparent that the prevention of heart disease and critical illness treatment should not be overlooked.

The artery wall in the blood circulation system of human body often thickens and loses resilience as people age. Moreover, excess intake of fat causes cholesterol to form fat accumulation (atheromatous plaque) on the artery wall, resulting in artery narrowing and blood vessel obstruction. Consequently blood circulation is obstructed and could not flow smoothly, which is known as “atherosclerosis.”

In case the hardened plaque inside the artery causes platelet activation due to fracture, it will massively cohere and adhere to the injured area of the vascular endothelium to form the thrombus so the blood vessel becomes completely obstructed at extremely short period of time and could cause the bring sudden death easily. Such condition is known as “atherothrombosis.”

The cause of cerebral blood vessel and cardiovascular disease is significantly related to the non-obstruction of artery and hence atherothrombosis leads to the occurrence of multiple cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases. The position of affected blood vessel will determine if the patients are suffering from heart disease or strokes or other diseases, with considerably severe consequences. Particularly, patients concurrently having diabetes or have had cardiovascular diseases should pay special attention to it.

Atherosclerosis is a medium artery lesson, where the continuous expansion of the illness condition will form atheromatous plaque, cause arterial canal cavity to narrow and could result in fracture, ulcer and thereby wall-adherent thrombus. When the narrowing artery is instantly and completely obstructed by blood clots, it will reduce the blood transmission capacity of the heart, causing myocardial cell to go necrosis due to hypoxia while the patients will experience severe chest pain, angina pectoris, cold sweats and other phenomena, known medically as “Myocardial infarction” or heart attack. When the plaque breaks and causes thrombosis at the cerebral blood vessel, it will obstruct the blood flowing into the brain, causing necrosis with the brain cells. Therefore, “strokes” or “transient ischemic attack” are formed, which are the most common disease among mid-aged and elderly with relatively high mortality rate.