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The cardiac intensive care unit is no longer only a place for patients recovering from heart attacks, like the coronary care units of decades past. A new University of Michigan study finds slightly more than half of heart patients are admitted to the CICU for noncardiac conditions, such as sepsis or renal failure, rather than for a heart condition. "It's an opportunity for providers to assess training and staffing models," says lead author Shashank S. Sinha, M.D., M.Sc., an advanced heart failure and cardiac transplantation fellow at U-M's Frankel Cardiovascular Center. The study was recently published in  Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes . "In order to get admitted to a CICU, you either have a primary cardiac condition -- such as a heart attack or heart failure -- or you have a sick heart from a prior event and now are admitted with a primary noncardiac condition -- such as sepsis or lung or kidney failure," Sinha says. "We fou...

The protruding elements seen in the different slides are cholesterol crystals. Those elements are arising from within the artery wall, causing tearing and damage to the artery. The colors have been added for enhancement and imagery. Credit: Michigan State University A new Michigan State University study on 240 emergency room patients shows just how much of a role a person's cholesterol plays, when in a crystallized state , during a heart attack. George Abela, lead author and chief cardiologist at MSU, analyzed the material that was obstructing the coronary arteries of patients who had suffered a heart attack and found that 89 percent of them had an excessive amount of these crystallized structures, referred to as cholesterol crystals. The research is now published online in the  American Journal of Cardiology . These crystals are released from plaque that can build up in the heart and is often made up of fat, calcium and other substances as well. When this mat...