“The Wake Forest School of Medicine studied > 9,000 people. The paper is Race and Sex Differences in the Incidence and Prognostic Significance of Silent Myocardial Infarction in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study. The important finding is not about sex and race differences but that 45% of heart attacks (myocardial infarction) are not clinically documented meaning not causing enough symptoms to cause medical attention. The silent myocardial infarction (SMI) incidence was surprising. The SMI was detected by EKG changes in people who had no symptoms of ever having a heart attack. The study was over eight years. The combined total of heart attacks was 7.4% of the studied group. A heart healthy life style is even more important with this information.” Bill Chesnut, MD
(Return to New Health News, https://billchesnutmd.com/new-health-news/)
Silent heart attacks make up 45% of all heart attacks, study suggests
TIME (5/16, Alter) reports that research suggests “silent heart attacks, which have no symptoms but still involve a loss of blood flow to the heart, make up 45% of all heart attacks and triple the chances of dying from heart disease.” The findings were published in Circulation.
NBC News (5/16, Fox, Powers) reports on its website that investigators “looked at the medical records of 9,500 middle-aged men and women taking part in a heart disease risk study.” The researchers found that “nine years into the study, 317 of the volunteers had ‘silent’ heart attacks and 386 had heart attacks that were noticed right away.”
On its website, CBS News (5/16, Marcus) reports that the researchers also found that “found that silent heart attacks were more common in men – but more likely to cause death in women.”
CNN (5/16, Kounang) reports that the study indicated “having a silent heart attack increased the chances of dying from heart disease threefold and increased chances of dying from any cause by 34%.”