As American Heart Month draws to a close, here’s a reminder that heart disease costs the U.S. health system $216 billion per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not including an additional $147 billion in lost wages and productivity.
Other statistics are even more startling. According to the American Heart Association (AHA), heart disease kills one in three women and is the No. 1 killer of women in the U.S.
Fishkill resident Louise Praino was determined not to be part of those statistics. Her mother and father and nine other relatives died from heart attacks. It didn’t help that the family was in the meat business and ate meat two or three times a day. Then her brother had triple bypass surgery at 42. When Praino’s cardiologist retired last year, she found Binoy Singh, M.D., chair of cardiology at Phelps Hospital in Sleepy Hollow, who practices in Yorktown Heights.
Even though she exercised twice weekly and watched her diet, Singh had to conduct several heart tests. Praino was perplexed since she felt great and had no symptoms or problems breathing. But Singh discovered that her rear circumflex artery, one of two branches of the left main coronary artery, was 80% blocked. His colleague Varinder Singh, M.D. (no relation), chair of cardiovascular medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan and an interventional cardiologist, stented the rear circumflex artery at the cardiac catheterization laboratory of Northern Westchester Hospital’s Seema Boesky Heart Center in Mount Kisco this past fall. Praino is back to exercising and playing with her grandchildren. “I have to praise Dr. Singh. I really believe he saved my life.”
For more, visit https://nwh.northwell.edu/heart.
