A rising tide of heart attacks followed Hurricane Katrina
By a
"After Hurricane Katrina devastated our city, the cardiology department found that we had very busy on-call nights," said
Investigators found that hospital admissions to
In addition, post-Katrina patients were significantly more likely to have other risk factors for heart attack, including:
"Although the general emphasis after an event such as Katrina is on rebuilding, we should not neglect the health of those affected by a disaster," Irimpen said. "This massive natural disaster may have had a greater impact on the development of chronic medical diseases than originally realized."
In other findings, the study identified additional potential health problems among the post-storm group. For example, these patients were more than twice as likely to abuse drugs and/or to have a psychiatric disease as their pre-Katrina counterparts. In addition, unemployment and a lack of health insurance were significantly more frequent among the post-Katrina group of patients. Post-Katrina patients were also more likely to receive prescriptions for heart-disease medications and drugs to lower cholesterol and high blood pressure, although they were only half as likely to take their medication, compared to the pre-Katrina group.
For this single-center study, investigators examined 150 records for heart attack patients admitted to
Since the study was observational, it only found an association between Katrina and an increase in heart attacks, not a cause of the increase. In addition to this limitation, the study involved patients at a single hospital and could not control for all possible influences on heart attack risk since data relied on medical records of past heart attacks.
According to the
The good news is that risk for heart attack can be lowered with lifestyle changes such as avoiding smoking, eating a healthy diet, controlling high blood cholesterol and blood pressure, being physically active, controlling our weight, managing diabetes, reducing stress, and limiting alcohol, according to the
Keywords for this news article include: Hospital, Cardiology, Heart Attack, Hemodynamics, Heart Disease, Blood Pressure, Risk and Prevention, Myocardial Infarction,
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