Arteriosclerosis (1954)

today diseases of the heart and blood vessels constitute this nation's number one health problem medical science with the aid and support of the American Heart Association and its affiliates is attacking this problem on many fronts one of the crucial battles is being waged against a form of arteriosclerosis or hardening of the arteries it is known as atherosclerosis and it affects more people than any other single disease the study of atherosclerosis deals with the blood vessels so let's look inside one and watch the blood flow this is an experimental animal but the action is the same as in the human body as long as the blood moves along there isn't much to worry about it's like this street a traffic artery as long as the traffic keeps moving everything is alright but when cars park and double-park things get clogged up and when it gets so bad that cars have difficulty getting through then you have real trouble but let's get back to the arteries here's a section through a normal human artery this is an actual photograph and it shows the heavy muscular layer that makes the walls flexible the inside layer is smooth and lets the blood through with no difficulty you must realize that blood isn't just a thin fluid like water here inside another blood vessel you can see the red and white corpuscles it carries it is important that these among other elements of the blood get through to the tissues as long as the artery stays smooth this important traffic inside it will move along steadily but in atherosclerosis some substance forms deposits in the wall after a while there's a little bulge out into the artery as the deposits get bigger the walls get harder more space is taken up inside the artery and the blood begins to have trouble getting through in bad cases like this one there's not much space left inside the artery for any blood to get through and the walls are so hard they can't stretch but how is the flow of blood affected we can show that in a simple way if we try to fill these two beakers but use different sized tubes the one with a narrower opening will take longer even though both tubes are full now you can understand why a clogged up artery will not carry enough blood to supply the organ it feeds and you can begin to see how this disease affects the body the less blood and organ gets the slower and less efficiently it will function but slowing up the blood flow isn't the only danger here this is part of the large artery from an actual case and this revealed the second danger from atherosclerosis these hard patches on the inner surface are sclerosis like the small bulges you just saw they are rough and blood clots may form at any rough or injured surface here's what can happen this is a small vessel in an animal the wall has been injured slightly just about the middle of the screen to produce a rough surface first a small clock begins to form then it grows larger and starts to interfere with the flow of blood here's another one you can watch the clot forming when the blood flow is fast these clots can break away and then they go along to smaller blood vessels where they get stuck closing off flow completely there it goes on its way to cause real trouble and here's what happens when a clock closes off an artery the black mass is the clot and no blood at all can get through this can lead to severe damage in the heart for instance a clot suddenly cuts off blood from a part of the muscle the result is a heart attack part of the heart can't do its work now of course every heart attack isn't fatal about 85% of patients recover from their first attacks but this is because the human body leaves itself an out small arteries around the block one set up detours around the clock and get the blood through to where it is needed where a clot forms in the brain nerve centers are damaged the nerves from these centers don't carry any impulses and the organs they usually supply become useless in this way a small clot in one area of the brain can produce paralysis of the whole side of the body but here too detoured blood vessels help to restore use of the affected parts of the body but the body is limited in what it can do to lessen the damage from these attacks that is why after us chlorosis is such a serious health problem now what's being done about it there's a whole new approach to atherosclerosis until about 50 years ago doctors thought of it as something that comes naturally with old age but then some of them discovered that not all old people get it they were finding contradictions like this a normal artery in a man 76 years old a 36 year old patient with a very advanced case of what they used to think was just the effects of old age and an infant three months old with atherosclerosis about 25 years ago some medical scientists began to feel that maybe it wasn't entirely due to old age maybe it was the result of disease if they could find out just what caused these patches on the artery wall they might even develop treatment for it and perhaps a preventive so research workers started asking themselves questions about the disease what for example is the substance that gets into the artery walls and forms the deposits they've examined them and found them to contain cholesterol this is a fatty substance found widely in nature in fact there is normally some in the blood if cholesterol is found normally in the blood why doesn't everyone get a thorough Sclerosis so they studied cholesterol in its various forms and found only certain ones are involved in the disease one research group is experimenting by whirling blood samples in a machine called an ultracentrifuge it spins them at fantastic speeds of over 50,000 revolutions per minute this makes it possible to separate and measure the quantities of the various types and even take a picture of the measurements this is one of the methods by which research scientists hope they can learn how to diagnose early and possibly prevent atherosclerosis now how do these cholesterol x' get into the blood another research group has been investigating the facts taken into the body as foods fats are absorbed into the blood and give the blood serum there's milky appearance in normal people this fat is used up rapidly and the blood becomes clear again this may be because a clearing factor is present in some people and not in others if this clearing factor can be discovered and added to the blood perhaps atherosclerosis can be prevented in some people another question is do fats in the diet have much effect on the production of atherosclerosis a research group in Europe reported on a rather unusual study here the amount of fats consumed in the diet took a very sharp drop during the war then after the war they were again added to the diet but they found that during those same years the number of deaths from atherosclerosis and other related diseases took a similar drop and then rose again so diet would seem to have something to do with it but what happens to the fats that go into the body a research group is looking for that answer they inject harmless radioactive molecules of fat into the blood and then trace them around the body with sensitive Geiger counters that's using atomic energy for medical progress here's another interesting research project on this disease this high-pressure machine is pumping blood which contains cholesterol against small pieces of artery wall the amount of cholesterol deposited in the tissue is found to be different in different people so perhaps the treatment or prevention of atherosclerosis may require different methods with different people what can be done where a thorough sclerosis already exists where the danger of clotting is present research has produced substances which can delay or even prevent clot formation here for example we can see what happens when blood flow is slowed down experimentally you can watch the corpuscles pileup in the blood vessel in the middle of the screen now a substance is injected which prevents this effect in a short time we again have a normal rapid flow in the lower vessel these substances are already available for use and are helping to cut down the toll of disability and death from atherosclerosis research has found out a great deal about this disease and has been able to produce it experimentally in animals here's an artery from a test animal with characteristic deposits but what is more important in the fight against any disease they have also been able to prevent it in some animals and so we have one of the early findings that lead medical men to believe that this disease will eventually be controlled what is a thorough sclerosis what causes it what can we do about it the final answers will come only from research and research means many people doing many things many times it means constantly checking and rechecking results it means asking more questions and posing more problems it means learning everything there is to know about this important highway system what it is and what it carries it means studying people to understand better why in some blood vessels become hard or clogged up while in others they remain normal and soft with the strong and continued support of the American Heart Association and its affiliates there is every hope that medical science will find the answers and with them the ability to successfully treat Pathros therosis and even prevent