First Heart Attacks Are Less Deadly
According to U.S. researchers, better treatments and prevention efforts have made first heart attacks less deadly.
"The severity of heart attacks is decreasing," Dr. Merle Myerson of Columbia University in New York told Reuters.
"That is one reason among many that deaths from coronary heart disease are declining," said Myerson, whose study appears in the journal Circulation.
Over the last decade, deaths due to heart disease have fallen 30 percent in the U.S. thanks to declining smoking rates, better treatments, and better cholesterol and blood pressure control.
According to Myerson, controlling the risk factors that contribute to a heart attack also reduces the severity of the first heart attack.
"People come into the hospital and their heart attack is not that bad. It may involve a smaller portion of their heart," Myerson said.
Myerson’s research has been part of an ongoing project called the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study.
She included previous data from the study, dating back to 1987, and added data through 2002 on more than 10,000 first-time heart attack patients.
Myerson’s team checked enzyme levels in blood that indicates heart muscle damage, changes in blood flow, and blood pressure, all of which are indicators for heart attack severity.
The team found improvements across all the data.
"This study shows everyone has a decrease of severity of their heart attacks”¦men and women, blacks and whites — all showed the same trends," Myerson said.
The team took extra precautions to carefully analyze trends in race, and found that a measure on the Q-wave, an electrocardiogram, was higher in blacks.
"When we see that particular pattern, it generally indicates more of the heart muscle was affected by the heart attack," Myerson said.
According to Myerson, blacks fared as well as whites overall, showing a trend of improvement.
The amount of patients arriving at the hospital within two hours of their first symptoms did not improve, and remained at nearly one-third of all heart attack patients.
The findings suggest that hospital staff is treating patients better upon arrival, and that patients are taking better care of their heart risks, Myerson said.
She urged doctors and patients to keep on the offensive against heart disease, especially in the midst of rising obesity rates.
"Hopefully, this will speak to allocating money and support for prevention," Myerson said.
Heart disease is the number 1 cause of death in the United States.
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