How one Pittsburgh organization is helping women understand the symptoms of heart disease | KD Sunday Spotlight
Natalie Kim is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University who has spent the last 3 years reporting on local government issues. Before joining Pittsburgh Current, she wrote for the Carnegie Mellon student newspaper, where she covered campus politics and community relations.
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To Dr. Michele Hebda, it feels like yesterday that she lost her best friend."Back in 2022, my sister Heather had chest pain, numbness, and tingling in her arm," she recalled.Her sister Heather was a 39-year-old healthy mother of three children. "(Heather said she) felt like she was going to pass out after putting her new three-month-old baby into the baby carrier," Dr. Hebda recalled. After the hospital said Heather was ok to go home, she went back a week later with the same symptoms. Hebda described the moments with her sister from when she "went to the Cath Lab, and that's where SCAD appeared." SCAD is an acronym for Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection."The one puff of dye caused the flap to flip up and block blood flow to the rest of her body," Dr. Hebda explained. Three days later, Hebda lost her beloved sister to complications related to SCAD. The CDC said heart disease is the number one killer of women in the U.S. It has been underdiagnosed and misdiagnosed in women for year