Heart Attack Awareness with Cardiologist Dr. Lou Kohl

Corn Nation: for Nebraska Cornhuskers fans

Cardiologist Dr. Lou Kohl will join me tonight. Dr Kohl is my cardiologist, the man who saved my life just over nine years ago. On August 21st, 2015, I had a Widowmaker heart attack, and I was dead for over 20 minutes. I have a brain injury because of this experience.

I realize we all want to be talking about football.

I feel like I wouldn’t be doing my job as a survivor if I didn’t make other people aware of what it’s like to go through a heart attack and what it’s like to deal with heart problems. There is a massive amount of anxiety, anger and depression that comes with a heart attack.

There’s a good chance you or someone you love will deal with this during your lifetime.

Look at these statistics from the CDC: Heart disease in the United States

• Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups.1
• One person dies every 33 seconds from cardiovascular disease.1
• In 2022, 702,880 people died from heart disease. That’s the equivalent of 1 in every 5 deaths.12
• Heart disease cost about $252.2 billion from 2019 to 2020.2This includes the cost of health care services, medicines, and lost productivity due to death.

Heart attack

• In the United States, someone has a heart attack every 40 seconds.3
• Every year, about 805,000 people in the United States have a heart attack.3 Of these, 605,000 are a first heart attack, and 200,000 happen to be people who have already had a heart attack.3
• About 1 in 5 heart attacks are silent—the damage is done, but the person is not aware of it.

We will discuss, from my side, what it’s like to go through and survive a heart attack and from Dr. Kohl’s side, what people overlook at about heart attack - common misconceptions, etc.

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