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Dr. Krock’s cardiologist practice in McKinney and Frisco, Texas.

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Dual board certified cardiologist. Learn heart symptoms, risk factors, and how to catch problems early. The Heart Smart Group, North Texas.

Small daily choices add up more than any single bi

Small daily choices add up more than any single big decision.
Ask your doctor which of your own morning habits are actually working for your heart.
This content is for educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. For personalized guidance, visit the prevention clinic with Dr. Marc Krock and the team at The Heart Smart Group.

A calcium score is not a yes or no on a blockage.

A 62-year-old came in with chest pain and walked s

A 62-year-old came in with chest pain and walked straight into a cardiac catheterization.

The images showed blockages in every major vessel. For a case like this, with diabetes and involvement of the LAD (the main artery supplying the front of the heart), bypass surgery gives better long-term outcomes than stenting alone.

Not every blockage gets a stent. Sometimes the right answer is open heart surgery, and knowing the difference is the whole job.
General information only. Individual treatment decisions depend on each patient's full clinical picture.

When I was younger, I thought my job was to fix th

When I was younger, I thought my job was to fix the people who were dying.

That is what I signed up for. Put in the stent. Save the life. Move to the next room. The patients with the small problems, the worried ones, the ones whose labs and tests came back fine, I would reassure them quickly and move on. There is nothing wrong. You are okay. Next.

I did not understand what I was doing.

Those patients were going home convinced something was still wrong. Convinced they were dying. Debilitated by a fear I could have lifted in five more minutes of real conversation. I just did not see it. No one told me that the reassurance itself was the medicine. That for a lot of people, the few minutes I spent making sure they actually believed they were okay would change the next 20 years of their life.

I wish someone had told me that earlier.

Now I know. The patient with nothing wrong needs me just as much as the patient in the cath lab. Sometimes more. Because the one who is dying gets fixed and goes home grateful. The one who is afraid goes home and lives smaller until someone tells them, with enough care that they believe it, that they are going to be alright.

If you have ever left a doctor's office still scared, that is not you being dramatic. That is a visit that did not finish the job.

He was having a heart attack while treating himsel

He was having a heart attack while treating himself for heartburn.

This is one of the most common mimickers we see. Reflux and a heart problem can feel almost identical, which is exactly why people talk themselves out of getting checked.

Here is the difference worth knowing. Heartburn tends to come from the stomach. Angina, the pain from a blood flow problem in the heart, often gets worse with exertion and eases with rest, and it can become unstable. The biggest red flag in his case was simple. His usual reflux treatment stopped working.

He is on his way to the cath lab now so we can find the blockage and open it.

If you have reflux and your usual treatment is not touching the pain, do not wait it out. That can be your heart. Get evaluated, and treat it as an emergency if the pain is severe or comes with shortness of breath or sweating.

The FDA just approved Lipfendra, the brand name fo

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