About CardiacHealth

Assess Your Cardiac Risks 

Welcome to CardiacHealth!

I am Dr. Tryzelaar, and I have created this site to enable you to make informed decisions about your own heart care. Cardiac disease, and in particular coronary artery disease (CAD), is the number one killer in America. Despite ample supply of medical information about CAD on the Internet, it is frequently difficult to find and understand, especially if you want to learn about your options for treatment. Not only you, but often your doctors as well are facing a bewildering set of changing guidelines. To make things even more confusing, advertising and for-profit research, have as goal to sell product, not to inform patients.

Here, I will provide you with general information about your heart and coronary artery disease.  In addition however, after answering a few questions, you will be able to get personalized information about

• Your cardiac risks,
• The optimal treatment for patients like you.

Usually this is only available via consultation with a cardiac specialist. Although often identical to what you will hear from your own doctor, I hope you will find this helpful, even if it only confirms what you already know.

The website also has a number of sections, "Ask Dr T",  "Heart Healthy Living" as well as "Professionals"  that have been created to highlight specific issues and questions, and act as an industry watchdog, translating medical news into a language understandable for lay people. I have spent my career taking care of patients with heart disease and am an expert in all issues that patients like you face, and will use this knowledge help you ask the difficult questions, such as:

• Can medications, diet & exercise alone take care of my illness?
• What are my chances?
• If I need a procedure, will it be the best treatment for me, or do I need another one in the nearby future?
• How much will it cost?
• How do I know I am getting the optimal treatment?
• Should I go elsewhere for treatment?

Too often, patients are afraid to ask these and questions and it is only afterwards, particularly if things haven’t gone as promised, that these issues come up. This is why this website was created and I hope you will be able to make good use of it. The questionnaires are private and your personal information is protected.

As the medical information in CardiacHealth is managed solely by me, it is inevitable personal prejudice in the selection and publication of information occurs. While I try to be objective, I have strong opinions about some of the issues discussed, just like occasionally erros and incomplete data need to be corrected. The question and asnwer portion of CardiacHealth force me to continuously review previously written pages, as well as published data elsewhere, and thanks to the Internet, information is updated whenever necessary. 

In order to cover some of the expenses (website maintenance is expensive!), we will accept donations as well as allow some advertising. I will guarantee you however, that the site will be free for you and independent of any commercial influence.

Dr T.