Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection

We’ve Come a Long Way

October 19, 2012

I just learned about this web site today. I had a SCAD in 1995 at age 50. I have been fortunate and have had no further cardiac events. I am fully active, taking care of animals, working in the woods, hiking some trails.

I am a Family Physician (retired ’09) and at the time of my SCAD I spent my recovery days searching the medical literature. At that time there were 128 cases of SCAD reported in the English literature. Only 1/3 of those made it to the hospital alive. This means there was no database and no knowledge of what SCAD is. There was not a name for it then. To search for it I had to look under coronary artery aneurism. (Aneurysm and direction are related.) I am delighted to see this web site and to see Dr. Hayes pioneering the research on SCAD.