FRIDAY, Feb. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Cutting off the flow of
blood to the heart by repeatedly inflating a blood pressure cuff
appears to reduce the amount of tissue damaged during a heart
attack, a new Danish study shows. In a study of 142 patients
being rushed to a hospital for treatment of severe heart
attacks, the amount of heart tissue saved for those who got the
treatment, called induced ischemia, was 30 percent greater than
for those who didn't, according to a report in the Feb. 27 issue
of The Lancet. "For patients being transported to the hospital
for acute myocardial infarction [heart attack], we inflated the
blood pressure cuff for five minutes, relaxed it and repeated it
four times," said study author Dr. Hans Erik Botker, a professor
of cardiology at Aarhus University Hospital in Skejby. While the
initial results appear promising, induced ischemia is not being
used routinely, Botker said. "We have demonstrated
cardioprotection by decrease of the infarct [damaged heart
muscle]," he explained. "But t