Abhishek Deshmukh.

Women who are experiencing sudden or continuing stress can have chest pains and other symptoms of a heart attack. But patients with “broken heart syndrome” don’t have blockages in the arteries, although the apex of the left ventricle is dilated. While women are at greater risk, in this case that isn’t a great concern because mortality is rare.

“This is not potentially life threatening,” Deshmukh said. “I think people shouldn’t get extremely anxious and worry about this. These kinds of patients present like heart attack with EKG changes and blood tests that indicate a heart attack. But when they come to the emergency room and get an angiogram, there are no blockages in the arteries. So this presents like an acute event or emergency, but there is 100 percent recovery without damage to the heart.”

The syndrome is likely to occur when someone is under stress such as the loss of a loved one, a loss or change of jobs, or a divorce. It can also happen during happy occasions such as winning the lottery. Right now, not enough is known about how to prevent the condition except to avoid stress – which can be difficult to do.

“Because it is not completely well understood, we don’t know how we can prevent it,” Deshmukh said. “Initially this disease was not well reported. We looked at 6,229 cases of broken heart syndrome, which is the largest study done of this condition. Our study was unique in finding that women have a much higher risk.”

It would be a mistake to ever assume you are experiencing broken heart syndrome, and not seek medical attention. Deshmukh said someone with chest pain, or other symptoms like a heart attack, should go to the nearest emergency room as soon as possible. Heart disease is still the number one cause of death for women in the U.S., claiming about 500,000 lives per year. More women than men die from cardiovascular problems.

Deshmukh was surprised by the amount of attention the study has received. It has been covered by NBC, CNBC, BBC, Time, U.S. News, USA Today, Huffington Post, the Washington Post, and many others.

The study results were announced at a recent American Heart Association conference in Orlando, Fla.

Deshmukh advocates more study of the condition, which would start with collection of more data.

“We should have more registry because this is an underreported disease,” he said. “Then perhaps we can better understand it.”

About 1,000 hospitals provided information for the study, which looked at 6,229 broken heart syndrome cases in 2007. Of those, 5,558 were women, and only 671 of the patients were men. Even after adjusting for high blood pressure, smoking and other factors that can cause heart disease, women were at much higher risk than men to experience the syndrome than men.

Deshmukh said stressful events cause the body to produce a rush of adrenaline and other stress hormones that cause the heart to swell quickly, which impairs its function. The heart’s rhythm is affected, which produces blood substances consistent with a heart attack.

Deshmukh’s said his study showed the syndrome was three times more common in women older than 55 than in younger women. But the gap between men and women experiencing the syndrome is even greater in younger women. Women younger than 55 were 9.5 times more likely to experience it than men under the age of 55.

While the causes of the conditions aren’t known, Deshmukh said additional studies are planned. One theory is that hormones play a role, he said. Another is that men have more adrenaline receptors on cells in their hearts than women do.

The medical term for the condition is Takotsubo cardiomyopathy. It was named by the Japanese doctors that first identified the syndrome in about 1990.

Tags:

Bookmark:

Facebook

Technorati

Newsvine

Google

Related: