Most heart attacks go unnoticed

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In a heart attack, parts of the heart muscle die. What remains - if the patient survives - is scarred tissue. Researchers used imaging techniques to visualize the dead areas, revealing that four out of five infarcts go unnoticed.

Even a silent heart attack - which the person concerned does not notice - is not a trivial matter: the scar tissue that arises as a result can reduce the pumping capacity of the heart and thus permanently weaken it. The consequences can be heart failure and other functional disorders of the heart.

Dead tissue

For the study, researchers led by Evrim Turkbey from the National Institute of Health Clinical Center subjected around 1,800 participants to magnetic resonance imaging. On average, the subjects were 68 years old at this point in time. With the help of the contrast agent gadolinium, the researchers localized even the smallest dead areas in the heart that were not supplied with blood. They found what they were looking for in almost eight percent of the participants. Only one in five of them had had a previous heart attack.

Mute heart attack affects men more often

As expected, the likelihood of a silent heart attack increased with age. Men were six times more likely to have heart scarring than women. In addition, being overweight, smoking and high blood pressure increased the risk of an unnoticed heart attack.

During a heart attack, a blood vessel that supplies the heart muscle closes. If the blood circulation is not restored within a very short time, the affected muscle tissue dies. According to the Robert Koch Institute, around 280,000 people in Germany suffer from myocardial infarction every year. The main cause of myocardial infarction is coronary heart disease (CHD), in which the coronary arteries become increasingly calcified. It is favored by various risk factors such as obesity, sedentary lifestyle and smoking. (cf)

source

Evrim B. Turkbey et al .: Prevalence and Correlates of Myocardial Scar in a US Cohort, JAMA. 2015; 314: 1945-1954. doi: 10.1001 / jama.2015.14849

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