Heart Disease Brings TV Calling ; Buffalo Niagara’s High Rate of Heart Disease is the Subject of ‘Today’ Show National Report

By Gail Norheim

A producer for NBC’s “Today” show ended up at the original home of the chicken wing during her mission to explain to a national audience why the Buffalo Niagara region has a high rate of heart disease.

Dorie Klissas also found another local spot that takes a healthier approach to matters of the heart — the Heart Center of Niagara in Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center.

Klissas and a camera crew spent Monday and Tuesday in the region filming a segment for a weeklong series on heart health. The series will start Monday with a segment scheduled to air between 8 and 8:30 a.m. It can be seen locally on Channel 2.

The Anchor Bar in Buffalo was among the filming locations, but most of the crew’s time was spent with three local residents who are patients at the Niagara Falls hospital. Footage also was shot during interviews in the homes of the Heart Center patients.

The piece will focus on “a real high incidence” of heart disease in the Buffalo Niagara region, Klissas said. “It seemed interesting, and a question we should look at.”

Coronary heart disease is the single largest killer in the United States, causing one of every five deaths, and Buffalo Niagara has one of the highest rates of heart disease in the nation.

John Murray, president and chief executive officer of the YMCA of Greater Buffalo, was among those interviewed for “Today.” He lives in Orchard Park and has been a patient of Dr. Michael Merhige, director of the Heart Center, for over a year.

“I owe him a debt I’ll never be able to repay,” Murray said of Merhige.

Murray went to the Heart Center after he suffered a mild stroke last winter. “I was given a choice of bypass surgery or changing my lifestyle to reverse the effects of the heart disease,” he said. “What would you choose?”

The Heart Center focuses on preventing and reversing the effects of heart disease. Its course of treatment: a combination of lifestyle changes and the use of non-invasive diagnostic equipment to detect coronary issues early and see whether medications are effective.

Murray said he had his coronary flow measured after the stroke with a positron emission tomography, or PET, scanner. He couldn’t believe how much blockage was in his arteries, although he considered himself active. He decided to follow Merhige’s advice: He changed his eating habits, lost about 35 pounds and started taking several medications.

Murray was scheduled for a follow-up PET scan in April to see whether blood flow had improved, but he moved that date up to this week so Klissas could film him undergoing the test.

“Merhige laid the results of the first and second test side by side on the computer screen [for the film crew],” Murray said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was a radical change from what it was when I walked in eight months ago.”

Murray said no one knew that was going to happen, and he’s still a little stunned by his results. Now the company executive has even more resolve to stick to his diet and exercise regimen so he can achieve a personal goal of climbing Mount Fuji in Japan during a trip planned for summer 2007.

Klissas said she hopes the Western New York patients will help the show’s viewers make better decisions about using non-invasive technologies. “The message is medicine is moving forward and patients should take advantage. . . . There are treatments out there.”

Merhige has high hopes for the show’s impact, as well. “Hopefully it will be a model for the country to act earlier before it gets so severe as it is in our area.”

Merhige said there is no conclusive answer to why the region has a high rate of heart disease. “It’s a research question for us,” he said. “We’re now looking at patients who don’t get better after treatment.”

e-mail: gnorheim@buffnews.com