• Heart attack is the sign of having other serious health issues: Study

    Lifestyle
    Heart attack is the sign of having other serious health issues: Study
    The study also found that people from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds were more likely to die...

    Digital Desk: Researchers at the University of Leeds have analyzed more than 145 million records covering every adult patient admitted to hospital over 9 years to specify the risk of long-term health outcomes following a heart attack in the largest study of its kind. 

    The British Heart Foundation estimates that nowadays more than 7 in 10 people survive 'whilst' heart attack. It is a serious and life-threatening condition. In the treatment, the people receive quick and emergency treatment to get blood flowing to the heart muscle again. Yet previous research has shown that heart attacks can have health implications for patients including further conditions which affect the heart and circulatory system. 

    The new research, partly funded by the British Heart Foundation and Wellcome, shows that patients who have heart attacks tend to develop other serious health issues compared to people of the same age group and sex who haven’t had one yet.

    Up to a third of patients developed heart or kidney failure. Whereas 7% had heart attacks and 38% died from any cause within the 9-year study period. Heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, peripheral arterial disease, severe bleeding, kidney failure, type 2 diabetes, and depression all occurred more frequently for people who had a heart attack compared with those who did not differ overall.

    The study also found that people from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds were more likely to die or develop serious long-term health conditions. 

    In particular, those from more deprived backgrounds were likely to develop heart and kidney failure, compared to people from less deprived backgrounds of a similar age.

    Lead author Dr. Marlous Hall, Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology at Leeds’ School of Medicine and Multimorbidity Research in the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA) said, “There are around 1.4 million heart attack survivors in the UK who are at high risk of developing further serious health conditions. Our study provides accessible online information on the risk of these health outcomes for specific age, sex, and socioeconomic deprivation groups so that individuals surviving a heart attack can be well informed about their future risks, to support informed healthcare decision-making with their doctor.”

    “Effective communication of the likely course of disease and risk of adverse long-term outcomes between patients and healthcare professionals can promote positive lifestyle changes, encourage patients to stick to treatment, and improve patient understanding and quality of life.”

    The researchers analyzed the records of all individuals aged 18 years and over, who were admitted to one of 229 NHS Trusts in England between January 1st to January 31st, 2017. This amounted to 145,912,852 hospitalisations among 34,116,257 individuals. There were 433,361 reports of people who had a heart attack for the first time. The average age of heart attack patients was 667 years and 66% of patients were male. 
    The study also looked at 11 non-fatal health outcomes detailed below, plus death from any cause, and compared the results to a control group of 2,001,310 individuals.

    The outcome were heart failure, with 29.6% of the study group going on to develop the condition within nine years of their heart attack, compared with 9.8% of the control group over the same time frame.