James L. Caffrey, Ph.D.

Medical science is changing at a pace most people can’t imagine.  Probably the easiest example is life expectancy.  One hundred years ago, life expectancy was 49 years; fifty years ago, life expectancy increased to 68 years.   Today, life expectancy has reached a high of 76.7 years, based on 1998 figures.  But we can do better.  One of the considerations that comes with knowing you will live longer is worrying about how you will live - the quality of those years.  We can not only improve on life expectancy, we can improve the quality of life.

Cardiovascular disease is the #1 killer (of noncommunicable disease) world-wide.  While it is true that the number of deaths from cardiovascular disease has been steadily declining since 1950, there are still 59,700,000 Americans alone suffering from one or more types of cardiovascular disease.

According to the American Heart Association, using recent statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control:   if all forms of major cardiovascular disease were eliminated, life expectancy would rise by almost 7 years.  In comparison, if all forms of cancer were eleminated, the gain would be 3 years.  According to the same study, the probability at birth of eventually dying from cardiovascular disease is 47%; the chance of dying from cancer is 22%.  The chance of dying from HIV/AIDS is 0.7%.

So how do we do this?  How do we eliminate cardiovascular disease?  How do we improve our quality of life? 

As individuals, prevention is key.  We need to exercise more and eat a better balanced diet.  As scientists at the Cardiovascular Research Institute, we are developing less invasive procedures to assist patients of heart attacks and heart failure; pharmaceuticals with less severe side effects; bio-tissue products that will provide a greater chance for success for cardiac surgeries.  We’re even working on a pharmaceutical that may actually prevent heart failure. 

And there’s more.  Please read through our Product Development & Research section, and for more general education, access our Community Education.

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