Former Vice President Dick Cheney dies
Dick Cheney, George Bush’s former vice president, was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in American history.
While many people reflect on former Vice President Dick Cheney’s life and political accomplishments, others are surprised by his longevity.
Despite five heart attacks, multiple surgeries, and a heart transplant, Mr. Cheney lived a long life and died on November 3, at the age of 84, surrounded by his wife, daughter, and other family members.
“Modern medicine has kept this man alive for many years through innovative advances in the field of cardiology,” said Dr. Barjash Cheema, an advanced heart failure and transplant cardiologist at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
In a 2013 interview on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Cheney told CNN correspondent Sanjay Gupta that his heart disease was a product of genetics and an unhealthy lifestyle. The former vice president had a family history of “mental illness” and also indulged in fatty foods, beer and up to three packs of cigarettes a day.
Genetics is important and can predispose patients to certain coronary artery diseases, but lifestyle factors such as exercise, diet, sleep and stress “play a big role,” Cheema said.
Mr. Cheney’s first heart attack occurred in 1978, at age 37, during his first congressional campaign. He then suffered two more heart attacks while in Congress, in 1984 and 1988. The fourth occurred after the 2000 presidential election, when a legal battle ensued over who won.
The former vice president had a heart defibrillator implanted. The small electronic device monitors and regulates the heart’s rhythm by delivering an electric shock if it detects irregular heartbeats, Cheema said.
He said doctors were probably worried that his heart was weakened by his four heart attacks and implanted a defibrillator as an “insurance policy.”
According to the Associated Press, Cheney previously revealed that he had turned off the defibrillator’s radio function because he feared terrorists could attempt to deliver a fatal shock to the heart remotely.
In February 2010, after leaving office, Cheney suffered his fifth heart attack. Five months later, he was fitted with a device that pumps blood and compensates for the growing congestion in his heart. This is called a left ventricular assist device (LVAD).
Cheema said the device takes over the entire function of the left ventricle, which is responsible for pumping oxygenated blood throughout the body.
“Things are very serious in the world of advanced heart failure right now,” he says. In this world, typical treatments and drugs used to treat heart disease are no longer effective, and patients are likely to die within the next 1 to 5 years.
Cheema said LVADs are also typically used as a bridge for patients awaiting heart transplants. Typically, patients are given five to seven years to live after LVAD surgery, but Cheney had to wait just 20 months for a heart to become available in March 2012.
The former vice president lived another 13 years with a new heart. Cheema said this is the average survival time for a heart transplant and could have been longer if Cheney had received a new heart at a younger age.
Cheney’s health led him to co-author a book with cardiologist Jonathan Reiner titled “Heart: An American Medical Odyssey.”
In a 2013 interview with USA TODAY, Reiner said, “He has the longest cardiac history of any of my patients. … He has the most complex history in terms of the difficulty of the disease, the most moving parts. And he just happens to be Dick Cheney.”
Cheema now says Cheney’s story is “not as unusual as we think.”
“Of course, this is a serious story because he’s Dick Cheney and he’s a public figure, but Northwestern University Academic Medical Center and many academic medical centers do things like this every day for their patients,” he said.
Medical advances are extending the lifespan of heart patients, but Cheema hopes to see further advances in preventive care to avoid a first heart attack or five.
“What I’m most interested in… is how do we get a young Dick Cheney, identify his risk of developing heart disease in the future, and how do we get him intervention and support?” he said. “How can we move things forward? How can we prevent things from forming and use the technology we have to reduce the frequency of these kinds of stories?”
Contributors: Michelle Del Rey and Susan Page
Adriana Rodriguez can be reached at adrodriguez@usatoday.com.
