Q. I am 53, 5 feet 5 inches tall and weigh 140 pounds. In 2004 I had a heart attack that affected more than one-third of my heart. I exercise, but is there anything else I can do to restore the dead heart muscle? I want to live for a long time. – Suzanne, Ontario, Canada

A. Most heart attacks injure, but may not kill, the affected muscle. The sooner the blocked artery is reopened, the less tissue will die. That’s behind the push to get heart patients to the catheterization lab within 60 minutes after pain starts, as we do with more than 97 percent of patients at the Cleveland Clinic and are working hard to do at New York Presbyterian Hospital (our two main hospitals).