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How Does Smoking Affect Your Heart?

Health risks of smoking are widely known, and its connection to breathing problems and lung cancer is prominent. But smoking's impact reaches far beyond your lungs. Cigarette smoking harms nearly every other organ in your body, including your heart.

In general, smoking causes blood to thicken, increasing the risk of blood clots and damage to blood vessel walls. This can lead to a condition called atherosclerosis, a disease in which plaque builds up in the arteries, eventually narrowing them and limiting the flow of oxygen-rich blood to your heart. Smoking also can cause heart disease or eventually lead to chest pain, heart failure or a heart attack.

According to a multi-study analysis by The BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal), smoking as little as one cigarette per day carries a 50% higher risk of developing coronary artery disease and 30% higher risk of stroke compared to those who have never smoked. When combined with other unhealthy lifestyle factors such as unhealthy cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and obesity, the risk for heart disease grows even more.

The good news is that heart disease risk drops dramatically within the first year a person quits smoking. Quitting smoking can even lower your risk more than common medicines used to lower heart disease risk, such as aspirin or beta blockers.

Whether you're a constant smoker, trying to quit or previously have quit, learn more about your risk factors for developing heart disease by taking our heart health assessment. You'll find out your heart's real age and what you can do now to reduce your risk of developing heart disease in the future.

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Why Choose Us?

You can't take chances when it comes to your heart. Santa Rosa Medical Center is with you every step of the way - from helping you create a heart-healthy lifestyle to providing life-saving treatment during heart-related emergencies. The cardiac care team focuses on treating disorders of the heart and vascular system so that patients can enjoy the best health and quality of life possible.

Dedicated, experienced, board-certified cardiologists and allied health professionals
Accredited Chest Pain Center by the American College of Cardiology

As an accredited Chest Pain Center, Santa Rosa Medical Center has shown a commitment to quality patient care by meeting or exceeding an extensive set of stringent criteria. To maintain accreditation, our heart care department has processes in place designed to:

Focus on you, your needs and your heart health
Reduce the time from chest pain onset to diagnosis and treatment
Treat heart attack patients quickly during the critical window of time when heart muscle can be preserved
Ensure thorough training of Accredited Chest Pain Center personnel
Integrate the emergency department with the local emergency medical system
Support community outreach programs that educate the public to promptly seek medical care if they display symptoms of a possible heart attack

Our Services Include:

Diagnostic and imaging technology to find heart disease early, when it's most treatable
Cardiac catheterization, or coronary angiogram, including radial artery catheterization
Interventional cardiology using minimally invasive and non-surgical techniques including percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI)
Blood tests
Stress tests
Electrophysiology studies, electrocardiogram (ECG or EKG) and transesophogeal echocardiogram (TEE)
Holter monitors
Nuclear medicine scans such as positron emission tomography (PET), PET/CT scans, or thallium or myocardial perfusion scans

Heart Healthy Resources

A Woman’s Risk for Heart Disease is Different: Here’s What You Need to Know

Heart disease is a big issue in the United States for both men and women alike. But some risk factors are more unique to women.
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What Do Doctors Have To Say About Your Heart?

Is High Blood Pressure Considered Heart Disease?

Finding out you have high blood pressure can be worrisome if you aren’t sure what your numbers mean or what to do about them. Discover how high blood pressure affects your heart.
Read more »

How Does Smoking Affect Your Heart?

Smoking’s impact reaches far beyond your lungs, harming nearly every other organ in the body. Get the specifics on how smoking can influence your heart’s health.
Read more »

Why Your Heart Wants You to Pay Attention to Your Cholesterol

Your liver makes cholesterol in your body, but you also get cholesterol from eating certain foods. Find out how the wrong kind of cholesterol can impact your heart.
Read more »