So what’s next for president bill Clinton once he leaves the hospital? Like all bypass patients, bill Clinton will have to undergo some important lifestyle and medical treatment changes that are challenging for most to comply with. But he’s already trimmed down, and so he’s on the right track.
Important lifestyle changes and timely medical intervention and treatment is the key to cardiac rehabilitation. Like all bypass patients, Bill Clinton had to undergo some important lifestyle and medical treatment changes that are challenging for most to comply with. But he’s already trimmed down, and so he’s on the right track.
Dr. Nate Lebowitz, an interventional cardiologist at Englewood hospital, says, “The surgery that he had was a highly skilled highly technical highly expensive band aid on the underlying disease. This is a disease that wants to come back desperately. And it tries really hard to come back. If he goes back to his regular lifestyle and sees his cardiologist once a year, there’s very good data he’ll be back…he’ll be back with more heart problems.” High cholesterol will be a prime target to attack, keeping the bad cholesterol very low…around 60.
“There’s some good evidence in those studies that strokes and heart attacks don’t occur in people at high risk or don’t recur much at all when the LDL is at that level,” states Dr. Lebowitz. Keeping his high blood pressure in close check will also be key, with a target of 115/70. This is perhaps best followed with 24 hour blood pressure monitors.
“After 24 hours they bring it back and then we can print out 12 pages of incredible data upper number lower number day versus night, and what counts the most with regard to prognosis is the 24 hour mean, almost like an average blood pressure,” instructs Dr. Lebowitz.
Clinton will get the standard four drug cocktail typical after a bypass: two blood pressure medicines that also help reduce the workload of the heart, an aspirin, and a cholesterol lowering drug called a statin. However, he might get a newer drug that combines a statin with another drug that augments the cholesterol lowering effect. He may get niacin as well, which raises the good cholesterol or HDL.
As for his food choices, Clinton was on the south beach diet, now popular in New York and elsewhere. This is a good approach according to Dr. Lebowitz. “It’s a healthy carb diet, and it’s designed by a cardiologist in that it really attacks the underlying problem of abdominal fat and unhealthy carbohydrates that lead to abdominal obesity, diabetes, and ultimately heart disease,” says Dr. Lebowitz.