Question: can you solve heart attacks forever if you had enough funding?

Loan Nguyen answered on 12 Nov 2015:

Dear Zhang,
I am glad that you are aware that science research has limited funding, but I don’t believe that we can solve all heart attacks even if there is limitless fund. The heart is so complicated that there are so many things that can go wrong with it. There is the heart muscle which contracts and pumps but to the body. There is also the electrical part to the heart which controls its rhythm. There are also four heart valves which can be injured too. There are many ion channels in the heart with many research groups studying them, what goes wrong in disease. The heart is connected to the body be the blood vessels and when the blood vessels are not healthy, the heart suffers too. To solve heart attacks, we will need to solve all these relating problems.

In disease such as obesity and diabetes, the heart is forced to work harder than usual and if it cannot with the extra workload, it will go into heart failure.

So you see, because the heart does so much and is likned to every part of our body, it is the organ which is most vulnerable. The best way to look after the heart is to be healthy because a heart attack causes permenant damage. The heart cannot repair itself once damaged. Research is looking at making a brand new heart but we are far away from that happening.

I hope you have found this useful.

Loan