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By ED FLETCHER edf@leader.net
Saturday, February 05, 2000 Page: 2A
WILKES-BARRE – With the help of a $1.2 million grant, researchers at King’s
College hope to treat heart disease better through a new method of looking for
fatty deposits within the heart.
“Right now, we are dealing with an unknown. With this technology we will
be able to see what we have never seen,” said Dr. Debra Stamper, assistant
professor of biology at King’s. The grant from the National Institutes of
Health will play a pivotal role in furthering the technology, Stamper said.
Stamper and project director Dr. Mark Brezinski will enlist the help of
King’s College undergrads and have subcontracted MIT researchers for part of
the work.
“I like to liken the process to taking a microscope into the human body,”
Stamper said.
The technique would help doctors treat the leading cause of death in
America by enabling doctors to see inside the blood vessels of the heart after
a tiny probe less then 1 millimeter wide is fed through the patient’s arm and
into their heart.
The probe utilizes fiber-optic technology and infrared light to see inside
the heart. It is a reapplication of a process developed by an MIT researcher
to look at damaged eyes. The infrared technique is the first new imaging
technology in 30 years, Stamper said.
“We hope to be able to prevent heart attacks by doing preventative
measures. If you can see that a person is at risk, we can do something about
it,” she said.
Doctors have to rely on a patient’s family history, blood pressure and
cholesterol levels to determine the risk for heart attack, Stamper said.
“They are placing you in a risk category based on circumstantial
evidence,” Stamper said.~ “We’re trying to be able to see what is really in
the arteries before it gets into the danger zone.”
Stamper said better medical decisions could be made once doctors can see
inside the heart.
“Currently we have no ability to see whether or not people have these fat
deposits. If this technology works like we think it will, we will be able to
do more preventative medicine,” Stamper said.
Research shows fatty and tissue build-ups within the arteries of the heart,
called plaques, are linked to heart attacks.
Stamper hopes the equipment will be just as available as ultrasound
equipment, which was once just in major hospitals.
“The ultimate goal is to get it to where we could get it to the doctor’s
office,” Stamper said. “I would envision this being in every cardiologist’s
office.”
Call Fletcher at 829-7161.