Dick Cheney's 30-year CHD odyssey approaches transplantation crossroad

I wonder if any of Dick Cheney's cardiologists ever suggested that he consider drastic changes to his diet.  Bill Clinton apparently has done very well on his whole foods plant based diet.

Washington, DC - "Many of the opportunities I've had would never have come to me at all were it not for steady advances in the practice of cardiology," said the former US congressman, secretary of defense, and vice president [1].

Former Vice President Dick Cheney

"I guess what I'm saying is that, for those who wish Dick Cheney had called it quits a long time ago, they can blame it all on you."

Addressing cardiologists and other vascular-disease specialists, donors, and dignitaries in 2009 at an annual dinner sponsored by the Baylor Health Care System Foundation,Richard B Cheney described—with humility and humor—a battle with heart disease over more than three decades that had included four heart attacks, the first striking when he was only 37.

Weapons brought to bear against his coronary disease over the years, at least those known to the public, included coronary stents, bypass surgery, external cardioversion, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators.

While specifics have seldom if ever been detailed for the public, Cheney was in all probability sustained through the decades by an evolving state-of-the-art medical therapy aimed at, among other things, his sky-high serum cholesterol and progressively stormy renin-angiotensin system.

Less than a year after his Dallas speech, a version of which was published in the July 2009 Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings, Cheney would suffer a fifth heart attack, described for the public as "mild" but possible a turning point in his clinical course. His heart failure worsening, punctuated by acute exacerbations, Cheney—one of the most powerful and controversial figures in recent US history—would in the summer of 2010 be implanted with a continuous-flow ventricular assist device (VAD) that had only months before been approved by the FDA for destination therapy, the HeartMate 2 (Thoratec).

In late January of this year, days before his 70th birthday, Cheney—appearing fairly healthy despite looking considerably thinner than when he was in office—opened up about his VAD for the media and announced that he was still contemplating whether he would pursue what is seen as the definitive therapy for heart disease as advanced as his: transplantation.

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