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1 in 4 patients to develop heart failure after heart attack

A recent study found that 1 in 4 patients who suffered from a heart attack are likely to develop heart failure within the next four years. The paper was presented on Tuesday in Utrecht, the Netherlands,  at the Heart  Failure  2016 and the  3rd World Congress on Acute Heart  Failure. This is the first study of its kind.

The  factors,  according to the study, that  influenced the  most  in  patients  with  heart  failure were  older  age, greater socioeconomic  deprivation , and  comorbidities such  as  diabetes.  The most  important  and  frequents  ones found  in  the  analyzed  patients  were  older  age  and diabetes, according to a press release published by EurekAlert.

“Heart failure  is  a major medical  problem with  a high  chance  of hospitalization and death,” said Dr. Johannes Gho, a cardiology resident at the University Medical Center Utrecht. “Patients with  ischemic  heart  disease  are  at the  highest  risk.  This  includes  those  who  have  had  a myocardial infarction, also called heart attack,” he added.

A recent study found that 1 in 4 patients who suffered from a heart attack are likely to develop heart failure within the next four years. Photo credit: Shutterstock / Huffington Post

Dr.  Gho  explained that the research studying the incidence  of  heart  failure  following the  heart attack  is  limited and mainly  stems  from  the  thrombolytic  era when  drugs  were  used  to dissolve blood clots.

Today, Dr. Gho added, the treatment mostly used in heart attacks is percutaneous  coronary intervention  or  PCI, where  a  stent  is  used  open  the  blocked  artery,  which  makes  a  new approach worthy of study at this time. For the data, the team used electronic health records and the incidents this recorded after the heart attack was present.

The  electronic  data  came  from  the  UK‐based  CALIBER  programme  (Cardiovascular research using Linked Bespoke studies and Electronic health Records) and the primaries records were linked to the hospital’s admissions. The national data that collects the statistics in heart-related incidents was also an important source of information for the team of researchers.

About 25,000 people were identified in the massive data that had experienced a heart attack between 1998 and 2010 and had no prior history of heart failure. The patients were followed for nearly four years after they become part of the research.

Better care?

The results were relatively stable, Dr. Gho said, and this could be due to two competing trends. The first is that the treatment for heart attacks has improved so the risk of heart failure would be expected to decline, however, due to the treatment has indeed improved, more patients are alive after the heart attack and subsequently, they suffer heart failure.

The fact that there are more alive patients after a first heart attack showed the efficacy of the improved treatment. This person starts to be part of the statistics when they were not  even expected to survive before.

The study does not only offer some insights after the patient has suffered a heart attack, but also highlights  the important  risk  that  many  people  in  the  current  era  have.  The knowledge gathered in the study could be used to also improve treatments due to an important risk of heart failure in the patient with a recent heart attack.

Source: EurekAlert

Categories: Health
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