Participants:
Series Code: UP
Program Code: UP190124B
|
00:01 Welcome back. I'm your host Nick Evenson and thank you for
00:03 joining us on the Ultimate Prescription today where we are 00:05 talking about advances in medical technology and 00:08 Dr. Marcum we were just talking about some interesting 00:12 procedures with the heart and how that these things can be 00:16 really great for emergent care. 00:18 Yeah, and like I said modern medicine is great for 00:22 emergencies to sort of get you over the hump. Same with 00:24 medications, get you over the hump until maybe we can get at 00:28 the cause of disease. So we talked in the last segment about 00:33 how the heart pumps blood through the blood vessels 00:35 that supplies the organs. We need that pressure, we need that 00:40 oxygen. We didn't have all of these devices when I started. 00:45 We did not have these, but now we've developed a pump we can 00:48 put into the heart to buy us some time to perfuse the organs 00:52 so they don't die while we can work on the heart and maybe help 00:55 a person out with a stent. Also sometimes the heart gets 01:00 infected and gets weak. We call that myocarditis or broken heart 01:05 syndrome. We use these devices to generate blood pressure for 01:10 the organs, give it some time to heal. We have the external 01:14 devices including the ECMO which is extracorporeal membrane 01:18 oxygenation, big name. 01:20 ECMO's a lot easier to remember. 01:22 Yeah. Ventricular assist devices that buy us some time. That's 01:27 really a device that can buy us some time for transplantation. 01:30 Some people are born with just congenital abnormalities in 01:33 their hearts. You know there's a condition that we see in women 01:37 occasionally called peripartum cardiomyopathy where after they 01:41 give birth their heart gets weak Infections can cause the heart 01:45 to get weak. You know, the function doesn't do well. It's 01:49 nothing that the person's done it's just their genetics and 01:52 it's life and these things happen. So this is a great place 01:55 to use modern medicine. 01:57 Now I'm sure some of our viewers are listening to this thinking 02:00 this sounds scary. I don't want any of those devices to every 02:03 have to be used on me and we don't either. So prevention 02:06 really is the key. 02:08 Yes it is. If we can prevent these from happening that's 02:11 much better, but you know we all have bad genes. 02:13 There's a time and a place. 02:15 Right, you know there are congenital things that happen. 02:17 We've got modern technology and now we can help babies with 02:21 congenital heart defects. There's a condition called 02:23 tetralogy that we can help tremendously with. I have a 02:27 young lady that came to me the other day with a congenital 02:30 condition called a coarctation where the aorta narrows and we 02:34 opened up her aorta so she can live longer. So there's lots of 02:38 things that we're born with that we didn't choose to have. So 02:42 modern medicine really has it's place but it doesn't get at the 02:47 cause of a lot of these things. So we talked in the last program 02:51 about the different rhythms of the heart. The heart function, 02:54 you know, the pumping mechanism, many things are involved in that 02:58 Right. A lot of the time we see arteries. Unfortunately to this 03:01 day we haven't figures out a way to replace arteries. 03:05 The arteries get clogged up we can bypass around them, we 03:08 can stent them but we can't replace arteries so easily. Now 03:12 we can put the whole new heart in, but we can't replace the 03:15 arteries. So that's why lifestyle you know, these 03:19 stressors including the food stressors, all of that's so 03:22 important to slow down genetic aging of the arteries. But we 03:25 talked a little about the rhythm this atrial fibrillation that's 03:28 so common. Now I'm going to quiz you a little bit Nick just to 03:31 see if you're paying attention in the past. Oh oh. All right. 03:36 Do you remember what atrial fibrillation is? 03:37 Yeah it's when the top chambers of the heart dot like this and 03:40 it's just an erratic rhythm, sometimes fast. 03:43 Right you got that right. The question is what is the real 03:45 danger when the heart's not squeezing rhythmically? 03:48 What's the danger of that? 03:52 So the blood could kind of get stuck in here and there's a 03:54 little part that particularly creates clots. Those clots 03:55 develop and get dislodged then you have an aneurysm, right? 03:59 Well not an aneurysm, no. An aneurysm's just a weak spot in 04:03 the blood vessels where they dilate and that's a serious 04:05 problem too. A stress. Right a stress. So the atrium is 04:10 fibrillating but we have a little pouch called the 04:13 appendage that clots tend to get in more. And for all the people 04:18 with atrial fibrillation unfortunately many people have 04:21 it now. It's an aging rhythm it's the most common rhythm 04:25 lots of heart things can cause it. When people have it one of 04:27 the dangerous things about it is a stroke. And it's been 04:32 estimated that one in three strokes come from this rhythm. 04:36 So we have lots of medicines that we talked about before but 04:40 some people cannot take medicines. They either have side 04:43 effects that are bad or they have bleeding elsewhere in the 04:45 body. Like if you have a stomach bleed, I can't give you a blood 04:48 thinner medicine. If you've bled in the head, I can't give you a 04:51 blood thinner medicine. If you've fallen down a lot I can't 04:55 give you a blood thinning medicine. So now recently 04:58 there's a new procedure that we can do to limit the clots and 05:02 it's called the Watchman. 05:04 Yeah, now we've got a video clip of this and I'd like you to 05:06 just tell us what's going on here in the Watchman procedure. 05:09 Well this is, again, put through the blood vessels in our body 05:14 so we don't have to cut. That's sort of what it looks like 05:17 before it goes in. So we move this through the blood vessels, 05:22 this is how we get to the heart. And we put it in. The patient's 05:24 awake, they're just mildly sedated and what we see is we 05:28 up inside the atrium. So we find the atrium. That's the atrium, 05:32 what it looks like from the inside. We cross from one side 05:36 of the atrium to the other to the left atrium and then we sort 05:39 of look around to make sure we're positioned carefully and 05:42 we have catheters and wires that get us where we need to go and 05:46 we look at the different things and the way that we do that 05:48 is we put a little dye out there in it to make sure we're 05:51 positioned correctly. So there's a little dye to make sure we're 05:54 in the correct spot; that's called the appendage. We're in 05:58 the correct spot so we inflate this device; it's called the 06:02 Watchman and see how it closes off that area. 06:04 So the appendage is a place where clots develop commonly. 06:08 And we place that securely. We make sure it's in the right 06:12 place with some dye. And now the place where most of the clots 06:15 come from in atrial fibrillation the clots can't get out and over 06:19 time that's what it will look like from the inside out. 06:21 The body puts a covering of skin over that that's called the 06:26 endothelium and that lowers the risk of people with afib that 06:29 can't take blood thinners from developing a clot. 06:33 So then, you may not know the answer to this, but what is the 06:36 appendage there for? Does it serve a purpose? 06:38 Well you know I assume that it helps in the pumping of blood 06:41 throughout the body. I'm sure that God had a purpose for it. 06:45 You know like the appendix. No one's really quite sure what 06:47 that's there for. But we can do without the appendage. It's not 06:52 something that we have to have. Just like we don't have to have 06:55 our appendix for life. And there are other things that we don't 06:58 have to have to live. But I'm sure it's there for some reason 07:02 or it was at some point to help the heart function better. 07:04 It does do some pumping in itself, the blood gets in it and 07:07 it does do a little bit of pumping. But it's sort of a sack 07:10 that clots can get in. And it's sort of a baggy area that most 07:14 of the clots in atrial fibrillation come from. 07:17 So this is a place where modern medicine can help. Let's say 07:22 you've had atrial fibrillation for years and it's because it 07:26 runs in your family. And you come to my office and you've 07:31 been on it for years, haven't had a stroke, thank goodness. 07:34 Or maybe you've had a little stroke and you don't want 07:38 another one and you've been on blood thinners successfully for 07:40 five or ten years. But something else in the body gets older. 07:44 Let's say you have a little bleeding in the bowels, okay, 07:48 and it's not safe to put you on the blood thinners, or you get 07:51 older and you're falling a lot and it's not safe. However you 07:55 don't want to take the added risk of stroke because the 07:57 atrial fibrillation is still there. So we would say, hey, 08:01 listen you know we can lower your risk of stroke dramatically 08:04 with this Watchman procedure. So we would schedule you to have 08:08 this Watchman procedure and you'd still have to be on blood 08:11 thinners for a while because there's clots that can form. 08:13 We'd have you on it for a while and then eventually though we 08:17 could stop the blood thinners and that would lower the risk 08:19 of bleeding again from another source. So that's the use of 08:22 modern technology really to help people with atrial fibrillation 08:26 lower the risk of having a stroke. 08:28 Yeah. I'd say in a situation like that if I needed it I would 08:32 be very happy that the Watchman procedure was available. 08:34 Yeah, well it's pretty high tech but, like I said, there is a 08:37 place for medications for emergencies or parts that wear 08:40 out like the electrical system that wears out and atrial 08:44 fibrillation or medical problems trigger the atrial fibrillation. 08:47 Yeah, now we've talked about electrical systems of the heart 08:49 in previous programs, but what are some developments in 08:52 pacemakers and defibrillators? 08:53 Well pacemakers you know when the wires get old and they go 08:58 too slow pacemakers are great. Some people die prematurely 09:00 just because the wires get old first and everything gets old at 09:05 different speeds based on your mom and dad and the stress you 09:09 put on your genes. So let's say I've had people in their 40s 09:12 that the first thing that wore out was the wires of their heart 09:14 Well we can put in pacemakers. We didn't have them 200 years 09:18 ago, the people would die young. But now we can extend their life 09:22 just by putting in pacemakers. They've gotten smaller and 09:26 smaller, more safe to put in. We even have pacemakers that are 09:29 small like ticks that can be implanted into a heart and 09:33 there's no wires at all. These aren't the best ones and these 09:36 are really for people that are very, very sick and can't 09:38 undergo procedures. But the technology of pacemaking... 09:42 Not only do we have pacemakers but we can control them. We can 09:45 look at the battery, how long they last. We've made them 09:49 smaller and compatible so people can exercise and do things with 09:52 them. The original pacemakers were very big and bulky. Now 09:58 they are small. It used to be since they were magnetic they 09:59 had to stay away from magnetic fields like MRIs, but now we've 10:02 made them MRI compatible. It's pretty amazing what the 10:08 pacemakers have done to keep the electrical system that's 10:11 going too slow, or the wires that wear out, or the battery 10:14 that wears out to keep a heart going and a person living longer 10:18 So we have a lot of neat technology. 10:20 Yeah, a lot of great advancements that can 10:21 be of benefit to our viewers there. I want to get to the 10:25 Biblical prescription because, well technology continues to 10:28 change. We know that God's word doesn't change and it's always 10:32 relevant, so Dr. Marcum if you'd share with us a Biblical 10:33 prescription today. 10:34 Yeah I want to take us... You know Biblical prescriptions are 10:37 something that we can depend on for life. They're something that 10:40 don't change that we can use every single day because God's 10:44 word is our true source of strength and our true source 10:49 of healing. So I want to turn us to 2 Timothy 1:7... 11:02 So God didn't make us to be scared and frightened and if we 11:07 think about it our world is filled with more things to be 11:11 scared about all the time. I was listening to the news and 11:14 reading the newspaper. We have wars everywhere, we have people 11:18 that are sick. We have all sorts of things that cause different 11:22 types of people being scared. And that turns on the stress 11:26 chemistry which causes our brains to actually downshift. 11:30 So when we're downshifting our body we just want to stay alive. 11:33 So we make a lot of these chemicals like adrenaline and 11:36 cortisol and leukotrienes and cytokines that actually cause 11:39 us to get older, 11:41 turns on our bad genetics, causes us to age. Then we need 11:47 the place for modern medicine because things get old and wear 11:51 out, like we talked about today. 11:52 I've experienced that in my own life. When I get stressed out 11:54 about something I'm working on you know if I just put my head 11:57 down and say okay I'm going to do this myself, it generally 12:00 doesn't go as well as if I just like relax and be like Lord 12:04 guide me through this. Help me not be stressed. Help me to be 12:08 focused and to be productive rather than just getting 12:11 stressed and causing all these negative chemicals in my body. 12:13 So that's not how we're created but He wants us to have power 12:16 and love and sound mind. How do we get that. Well from being 12:18 with Him. By beholding we become changed. To know God is to love 12:23 love God. So it gets back to our worship, how we can change our 12:27 chemistry. We can turn off some of this fear and anxiety that's 12:30 causing our bodies to malfunction. So I think 12:33 this is a great Biblical prescription. 12:37 Well, Dr. Marcum, we're getting to the end of the program here, 12:38 but I want to thank you for sharing with us about more 12:40 advancements in technology in the medical space. Friends if 12:44 you would like to learn more about Biblical prescriptions and 12:47 find more truths that don't change, find constant 12:50 inspiration in God's word go to HeartwiseMinistries.org. 12:55 You can find our Biblical prescriptions app that you can 12:58 download there. It's available as a free download on both IOS 13:02 indoor platforms and I hope you tie into God's word every 13:05 day and it'll just prompt you to trust in God and don't stress 13:09 over the cares of this world. That's all we've got for today. 13:12 I'm your host Nick Evenson. Thank you for joining us. 13:14 Dr. Marcum will close the program with prayer in 13:16 just a moment. 13:17 ♪ ♪ 13:22 We've talked about how modern technology has changed, but one 13:25 thing that hasn't changed is God and our relationship that we 13:28 can have today with Him. Let's end our program today in prayer. 13:32 Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for being our Lord and Savior 13:37 and for healing us in your time. Help us to use modern medicine 13:42 and technology appropriately Father and 13:44 continue to go with us and give us peace is our prayer today. 13:48 Amen. You might have questions 13:51 regarding anything related to cardiovascular disease. Join us 13:54 at our website. That's HeartwiseMinistries.org 13:58 ♪ ♪ |
Revised 2020-03-16