Cement in Your Heart Is Not as Rare as One Would Think

Cement in Your Heart Is Not as Rare as One Would Think

(RepublicanJournal.org) – Heart health is crucial to your overall wellbeing, but many of us fail to take proper care of our tickers. Despite the importance of sensible lifestyle habits for the maintenance of cardiac health, many people still smoke cigarettes, fail to maintain healthy body weights, and allow their levels of “bad” cholesterol to climb. But, even if people take the proper steps to keep their hearts healthy, threats can still emerge from the unlikeliest sources.

The New England Journal of Medicine published its latest edition on Sunday, October 2. Within the publication was a report entitled “Intracardiac Cement Embolism,” detailing the case of a 56-year-old man who presented himself at a hospital emergency room with chest pain. He had previously undergone surgery to mend a compression fracture in one of his lumbar vertebrae. The procedure, known as kyphoplasty, involved the injection of medical cement into the area.

After he arrived at the hospital with chest pain, doctors sent the man for emergency heart surgery. The operating surgeons discovered a four-inch piece of cement had punctured the patient’s atrium and made its way to the lung, piercing that as well. The medical experts deduced a part of medical cement from the man’s first procedure had entered the bloodstream and made its way to his heart.

Luckily for the 56-year-old, the procedure to remove the cement didn’t appear to leave him with lasting complications. Strangely, this incident is not the first time doctors have discovered so-called cement embolisms; one wonders whether the use of medical cement might require more caution.

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