Heart attacks are on the rise as patients are younger and more obese new research from the Cleveland Clinic reveals. And a majority of them had preventable risk factors like high blood pressure and diabetes and were commonly smokers, according to a CBS report. The study was presented at the American College of Cardiology’s 65th Annual Scientific Session.
Dr. Samir Kapadia, a professor of medicine and interventional cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic and the central researcher said,”On the whole, the medical community has done an outstanding job of improving treatments for heart disease, but this study shows that we have to do better on the prevention side.” And “When people come for routine checkups, it is critical to stress the importance of reducing risk factors through weight reduction, eating a healthy diet and being physically active.”
Researchers examined 4,000 patients with heart disease risk factors who were treated for the most ominous type of heart attack known as ST-elevation myocardial infarction, or STEMI, at the Cleveland Clinic for over two decades, 1995-2014. Doctors divided the records of STEMI patients into four categories, each designating a span of five years, and the results were unexpected. “Very amazingly, what we found was the patients presenting with ST-elevation myocardial infarction were getting younger,” Kapadia said in a press briefing.
Examinations showed that the average age of a typical STEMI patient lowered from 64 years old to 60 between the first five-year span and the last. The incidence of obesity also increased from 31 percent to 40 percent with a rise in patients with diabetes from 24 to 31 percent. Blood pressure (55 to 77 percent) and chronic pulmonary disease (COPD) (from 5 to 12 percent) also rose.
And the most stunning find was that smoking rates increased from 28 to 46 percent, which discredits the national trend of declining smoking rates over the last 20 years. The results also indicated an escalation in the number of patients who have three or more risk factors rising from 65 to 85 percent.
Not surprisingly, the medical community is concerned. “We thought we were doing better prevention,” Kapadia said.