Has your heart ever skipped a beat—and not because you’re in love? Irregular heartbeats, known clinically as ‘arrhythmias,’ are not uncommon.

When a heart attack strikes, minutes matter. “The sooner a heart attack victim gets a clogged artery opened up, the better the outcome,” says Dr. Robert Kopitsky, the medical director of the cardiac catheterization lab at Missouri Baptist Medical Center. “In addition to surviving the attack, there is less damage and risk of future complications, meaning better outcomes down the road.” Ninety minutes is the most widely accepted time frame, he notes, but faster is better. “We do even better than that. Our goal is to get them in and have the artery opened up in less than 60 minutes, and we hit that target about 100 percent of the time.”

About 5 million people in the U.S. have some type of an arrhythmia, or abnormal heart rhythm, and the most common type is atrial fibrillation, explains electrophysiologist Dr. Karthik Ramaswamy, the director of the new Arrhythmia Center at Missouri Baptist Medical Center.

October is Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) Awareness Month, and while no one ever wants to experience this first-hand, about seven in 1,000 infants succumb to SIDS every year, according to World Development Indicators.

Huber, Ring, Helm & Co. P.C. has promoted SCOTT CRANCER to tax supervisor and THOMAS HELM JR. to audit supervisor. S

Dogs and cats each have four parathyroid glands, two on each side of the thyroid. Their job is to control calcium levels in the animal’s body. The high level (hyperparathyroidism) causes an increase in calcium levels; the low level (hypoparathyroidism) causes low calcium levels—sometimes dangerously low.