Phil Inzinga of "Sunday Morning Magazine" interviews Dr. Philip Adamson about Oklahoma Heart Hospital Research Foundation

Dr. Phillip Adamson, and Phil Inzinga spoke on air about clinical research happening at the Oklahoma Foundation for Cardiovascular Research, associated with the Oklahoma Heart Hospital. 

The following is an excerpt from this interview:

Phil Inzinga: "Why is Oklahoma so in trouble when it comes to heart disease?"

Dr. Adamson: "Oklahoma is 2nd in the nation in cardiovascular disease per capita...one of the factors is that heart disease starts early in life, the prevalence of childhood obesity, dietary indiscretions, genetics, smoking, lack of exercise: there are multiple things and inputs that go into a society that have high levels of coronary artery disease and we meet all of those." 

Phil Inzinga: A friend of the station just had a quadruple bypass, [and was] literally out for only 2 weeks...I remember when I was younger that when someone had a quadruple bypass, you didn't see them for sometimes 6 months, maybe a year. 

Dr. Adamson: "Thats True"

Phil Inzinga: "What has changed?"

Dr. Adamson: "The procedures, the technologies, the tools have developed over time such that patients can recover quickly. We have learned a lot from research, and THAT is why research is so important: we learn how to do things better, we learn how to do things quicker and safer for patients. What you see is the result of years of research to hone down to the BEST practice, and patients are benefitting from that. In fact over the past 30 years we've seen a 50% reduction in the risk of dying from coronary artery disease in this country,a 50% percent reduction...that is a result of significant research breakthroughs over those years.

[One] of the things we try to accomplish with research [focuses on helping] patients feel better, that the thing that we are doing leads to the quality of their life improving...[effectively] giving them their life back...The research that we have done over the years has really focused on that as well as helping the heart get better, and then preventing a next event, or a next disabling process."

Click here to listen to the entire interview

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