Date 2016-04-18
Category ARTICLES
“It’s not as benign a condition as originally thought,” Dr. Scott Sharkey, a research cardiologist at the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, told Yahoo News. “The true mortality rate is only becoming manifest as we have a broader experience with this.”
The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine, revealed only 10 percent of the test subjects were male, making the condition an overwhelmingly female-dominated condition. At first, the symptoms mimic a blocked artery, so doctors proceed by administering an angiogram to X-ray the heart’s blood vessels. Then they hone in on the heart’s left ventricle with a cardiac MRI or CT exam to see if it matches the distinctions found in the hearts of takotsubo cardiomyopathy patients.
The abnormal contractions of a broken heart usually go away after one to four weeks, but if the pain persists longer, patients receive aggressive treatments, such as blood pressure medication and breathing machines. Of the 45 patients treated, nine died despite the interventions administered by medical teams. Sharkey said the study’s results were important in highlighting the health dangers of a broken heart, especially for high risk groups such as those with cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, advanced age, or those with bleeding on the brain.
The more fragile a person’s health is, the more likely his broken heart could worsen his medical condition. So be gentle with people’s hearts, as you would want them to be gentle with your own.
Source: Medicaldaily
