Each February we look at the causes of heart disease, and remind you that it's the leading cause of death in both men and women - particularly among middle age and senior Americans. But there's also a growing number of young people whose hearts are failing. Health Reporter Erin Billups recently sat down with a young woman still struggling with the disease she could have avoided and filed the following report.
Tara Burke lived life as if she'd never die - but she almost did.
"I mean you can’t be drinking and snorting cocaine every day for the last five, six years and get away with it," she says.
Last year her sister found her unconscious. They rushed her to the hospital where they discovered she was in kidney and liver failure.
Once stabilized she was sent home. A few weeks later her heart gave out.
Doctors said she would have to wear a left ventricular assist device or L-VAD pump. Its battery packs sit in her purse, which she wears at all times.
"They basically told me there’s no medication for me to be on leaving the hospital. It’s either get this operation or die," says Burke.
"It's a pump that we directly put inside the heart to supply the body with blood. Doesn’t matter what your heart is doing at this point because this pump is acting to take over the work and the function of the heart," explains Dr. Sandhya Murthy, a heart failure cardiologist at Montefiore Einstein Center for Heart & Vascular Care.
It may seem shocking, someone in their 20s experiencing heart failure, but at least here, doctors say it's not rare.
"Tara is not the first case and it’s not gonna be the last case of a young person that comes in extremis. The difference now is that there is options to keep them alive," says Murthy.
Giving patients a second chance at life, 15 percent of Montefiore's L-VAD patients are under the age of 40.
A small percentage of young adults have heart failure due to a genetic abnormality but cardiologist Dr. Sandhya Murthy says it usually is the result of heavy drug and alcohol abuse.
"We know and we’ve known for years that they are directly toxic to the heart," says Murthy.
The hope is that the pump will allow Burke's heart to rest and repair itself, eventually pumping again on its own. If not, she will need a heart transplant.
She's now alcohol and drug free and hopes others learn from her mistakes.
"There's people close to me," she says. "And there’s nothing I could do to change the way they lived their lives but I think I showed them a pretty hard road that this could happen to anyone."