Cheney credits advances in health care, technology for his survival after heart disease

CHICAGO — Before an audience at the American Heart Association Scientific Sessions, former Vice President Dick Cheney recounted nearly four decades of living with various forms of CVD, crediting his health care providers and new treatments and technologies that have emerged since his first MI in 1978.

Since 1978, Cheney has had five MIs, HF, sudden cardiac arrest, atrial fibrillation, ventricular tachycardia and deep vein thrombosis, and has required lipid-lowering therapy, PCI and stenting, an implantable cardioverter defibrillator, a left ventricular assist device and a heart transplant. Cheney said he has a family history of heart disease and he smoked for 20 years, before quitting after his first MI.

Dick Cheney*

He said his cardiologist, Jonathan S. Reiner, MD, at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., described his fortune this way: “It’s as though … as I head in for work all the stoplights are red. But in my case, every time I got to one of those stoplights, it turned green.”

Today, however, “I am able to do nearly everything I did before … which I owe to the [heart] donor, to the tremendous medical team that made it all happen, and to the modern technology that got me there. When I needed cholesterol-lowering drugs, there they were. When I needed an LVAD, there it was — or stents or an implantable defibrillator,” he said. “None of those things existed when I had that first heart attack, and they represent the developments of the last 40 years to reduce the incidence of death from heart disease.”

One key to staying alive, Cheney said, was the decision to seek medical care whenever something did not feel “right.” His first MI was diagnosed after he felt a tingling sensation in two fingers, and “over the years, my symptoms have been very mild,” he said. One condition he had for accepting the vice presidency was that he would always seek medical treatment regardless of how “politically awkward” the situation might be.

“The big concern I had [after the first MI] was whether I could continue my campaign for Congress,” Cheney said. “I asked my doctor, Rick Davis, MD, if I had to give up my campaign, and his response was … ‘Hard work never killed anyone.’ It might not have been politically correct, but I welcomed that response. He explained fair and square that stress comes from living your life doing something you don’t want to be doing. But his basic message was, if you want to do it, and you feel up for it, go for it. I always had that in the back of my mind as I encountered difficulties during the course of my career.”

Cheney assumed his first MI would be a “one-off affair” after he quit smoking and made other lifestyle changes, but his outlook changed after a second MI in 1984. “I made a decision then that I think was extremely important,” he said. A friend recommended he visit Allan M. Ross, MD, FACC, chief of cardiology at George Washington University Hospital, who cared for Cheney until his retirement, when he transferred care to Reiner.

Ross and Reiner “were responsible for my health care,” Cheney said. “They knew what was going on in the profession and they also knew my case inside and out. And that decision, I know for a fact, on more than one occasion saved my life.”

According to Reiner, Cheney’s life underscores that “it is one thing to have a disease, but another to let the disease have you. Through his almost 40 years of heart disease, [former] Vice President Cheney never let the disease have him.”

Another valuable lesson that Cheney’s case illustrates is how important it is for there to be trust between a patient and his or her health care providers, Reiner, director of the cardiac catheterization lab at George Washington University Hospital and professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, said here.

“Before his heart transplant, I asked him if he was frightened and he said no,” Reiner said. “I asked, ‘How can that be? The VAD operation almost killed you.’ And, he said, ‘It’s easy; you told me this one would be easier.’”– by Erik Swain

For more information:

Cheney D and Reiner JS. Living with Heart Failure: Patient, Physician, Surgeon and Nurse Perspectives. Presented at: American Heart Association Scientific Sessions; Nov. 15-19, 2014; Chicago.

Disclosure: Cheney and Reiner co-authored a book, Heart: An American Medical Odyssey.

*Photo courtesy of Heart.org.