Heart Attack Archive

Hospitalization rates for heart attacks are going down, so maybe prevention efforts are paying off.

Two studies published in 2010 show that the American heart attack rate is continuing to decline. The first, published in Circulation, was based on Medicare data. The main finding was that hospitalization rates for heart attack dropped by about 23% between 2002 and 2007, which by the authors' calculations might have translated into 100,000 fewer hospitalizations a year for the 45 million Americans enrolled in the Medicare program.

What makes you worry that chest pain is serious, like a heart attack

When is chest pain serious? That dull burning feeling in your chest doesn't seem to be going away, and even feels like it is getting worse. Is it a heart attack, or something else?

It's a vexing question, one that millions of people — and their doctors — face each year. What's the problem? Chest pain can stem from dozens of conditions besides heart attack, from pancreatitis to pneumonia or panic attack.

A study based on data from the Women's Health Initiative suggests that a high resting heart rate is an indicator of risk of heart attack in middle-aged women.

Q. After my heart attack, my doctor told me that damaged heart muscle cannot be replaced. If this is true, why am I walking on a treadmill five days a week? Is this helping repair the heart muscle damage or strengthen what's left of my heart muscle?

A. Your skeletal muscles can repair themselves after an injury — pull your calf muscle and, after a few days or so, it heals. Until recently, it was believed that the human heart didn't have this capacity. But the heart does have some ability to make new muscle and possibly repair itself. The rate of regeneration is so slow, though, that it can't fix the kind of damage caused by a heart attack. That's why the rapid healing that follows a heart attack creates scar tissue in place of working muscle tissue.

Clots that form in a leg or arm vein can be deadly; prevention is key.

Blood clots are lifesavers when they seal a cut. They can be dangerous, even deadly, when they form inside an artery or vein. A blood clot inside a coronary artery can trigger a heart attack; one inside an artery feeding the brain can set off a stroke. Inside a leg vein, a blood clot can cause deep-vein thrombosis. Never heard of it? You're in good company. In a survey conducted by the American Public Health Association, barely one-quarter of adults were aware of the disease, and even fewer were familiar with its signs and symptoms. That's a sad state of affairs for a circulatory disorder the U.S. Surgeon General and others say is a critical health problem that causes enormous health consequences and numerous deaths each year. To draw attention to this overlooked condition, the Surgeon General has issued a "Call to Action" on it.

Deep-vein thrombosis (DVT) is a clot that forms in a vein that runs deep inside a leg or arm. Pulmonary embolism (PE) is its most serious — and often deadly — complication. One or both strike upwards of 600,000 Americans a year, killing at least 100,000. That's as many deaths as caused by breast, prostate, and colon cancer combined. And one-third of the survivors are left with long-term health problems.

Depression that develops for the very first time during recuperation from a heart attack affects recovery more than depression that started before the attack.

Recovering from a heart attack is tough enough without facing the fog of depression. Yet that's exactly what happens to nearly half of heart attack survivors. Depression is a painful, isolating, joyless state of mind that interferes with recovery and dulls life. It may even make it shorter "" people with post-heart attack depression are two to three times more likely to have another heart attack or to die prematurely compared with survivors who don't have depression.

Surviving a heart attack is cause for celebration. It's also a trigger for depression. Up to half of heart attack survivors get the blues, and many go on to develop clinical depression.

Early experiences with antidepressants weren't that promising because older tricyclic drugs such as clomipramine and nortriptyline sometimes threw off heart rhythms and further endangered the heart. This made doctors leery about recommending antidepressants, even when selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) such as Prozac (fluoxetine), and Zoloft (sertraline), and others came along.