Medicine: Precaution for Ike

President Eisenhower is receiving a new and still controversial treatment in the hope of lessening the likelihood of a second heart attack. According to Dr. Paul Dudley White, the Boston heart specialist, the President takes a pill containing a drug that “thins” the blood. The treatment is tricky because if it goes too far the blood might lose all clotting power, and a nick suffered while shaving could cause dangerous bleeding. The President’s doctors make frequent tests, make sure that his blood still has a safe margin of clotting power. He was taking pills daily, now takes them only when tests indicate that it is necessary. The drug is derived from dicoumarin.

Most coronary victims get such drugs for a few weeks after the attack, but are taken off them about the time they go home from the hospital. Many eminent heart specialists have advocated long-term preventive treatment, but the most impressive data in support of their theory have not yet been published. Dr. White gave a preview of them: in a study at Detroit’s Ford Hospital, the death rate among patients who kept on taking anti-clotting drugs after a heart attack was only one-third to one-half what it was among those who were taken off the drugs. This evidence convinced Dr. White, who at first opposed the treatment for the President. Two U.S. Army cardiologists, Colonels Thomas Mattingly and Byron Pollock, who have both used it for years, were its advocate.