Award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, who produces the PBS series on the brain, now examines the heart: how it works, what can go wrong with it and how we treat it. His three-part series, The Mysterious Human Heart, airs Tuesdays, beginning October 16, at 8 p.m., as part of KUED's Health Matters campaign.
Grubin explores the most common misconceptions about this unique organ and documents the latest scientific and medical revelation --discoveries that have transformed our understanding of the heart and given us new insights into the best ways to prevent heart disease and treat it when it does occur.
The first hour, "Endlessly Beating," examines the heart as a muscle B pumping almost 100,000 times a day, pushing six liters of blood in a ceaseless circuit to deliver oxygen to every cell in the human body. The hour tells the story of the normal heart through the histories of three people with end-stage heart failure, where a pump may be a temporary remedy, but in the long term, a transplant is almost always necessary. "The Spark of Life," airing October 23 at 8 p.m., looks at the physiological electrical mechanisms that keep a heart beating regularly and efficiently B and what happens when this most essential rhythm of life goes awry. The program takes viewers from New York to Brazil and into the lives of patients who suffer similar symptoms that actually signal different disorders. The range of treatment options, if not cures, is startling. "The Silent Killer," concluding the series on October 30, at 8 p.m., focuses on atherosclerosis, the silent blockage of the coronary arteries, which can trigger a devastating and possibly fatal heart attack. The key is to recognize the risk factors that feed the disease and to control them before it's too late. This program follows two patients through potentially life-saving interventions, but ultimately, the challenge is learning to live with a disease for which there is no cure.
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