Broken heart syndrome...a heart attack with normal coronary arteries.
Also called stress-induced cardiomyopathy or takotsubo cardiomyopathy, more often it's the women who experience the sudden intense chest pain, the reaction to a sudden surge of stress hormones caused by an emotionally stressful event. Its tako-tsubo name was derived from the shape of a japanese fish trap.
A female patient was brought to our hospital having chest pain. Coronary angiogram had shown that her coronary arteries were all normal. The CAUSE: she developed chest pain when her car got stalled in one of the busiest motorways around London.
It is misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms and test results are similar.
1. Same symptom of having chest pain
2. ECG results shows the same as one having an ongoing heart attack
3. Positive cardiac biomarkers - a blood test specific to heart muscle trauma (troponin)
4. Severe LV function from Echocardiogram - a scan to check the cardiac pumping function (left ventricle is tako-tsubo shaped hence the name)
Unlike a true heart attack, coronary arteries are usually normal and dont affect blood flow. What happens is that, the LV function is usually severely impaired leading to Heart Failure.
Though only temporary, this can cause a lot of problems in the short-term. Patients have had problems with heart rhtythm that can be deadly such as VT or VF. Symptomatic heart failure can also cause problems in breathing leading to RESPIRATORY ARRREST.
Due to this, patients are better managed in the hospital and be commenced on cardiac medications that help the cardiac muscle functions and rhythm control.
In my experience, most of our patients with broken heart syndome have been females, ages above 40 years old.
I just want to note that there have been a number of hospital cardiac arrests with normal coronary arteries with unknown cause.
*Please do more research as needed. I am a cardiac nurse, not a doctor.
(image from today.com; aliem.com) www.heart.org/HEARTORG/Conditions/More/Cardiomyopathy/Is-Broken-Heart-Syndrome-Real_UCM_448547_Article.jsp#.V_9W1hRIkUs
This is a fantastic post @immarojas! Hopefully, you have saved some lives with this information. We say that people can die from a broken heart and now you have put some science behind it. Showing that increased levels of emotional stress are just as dangerous as an increase in physical stress on a compromised cardiovascular system.
It's also exceptionally important for women because heart issues are often missed, so it's valuable to know that even if arteries appear clear there can be other things that can impair the ability of our hearts to function properly.
thank you. hope it can help some people.
I just went back through and read some of the other comments. Wowzers!!! That went right off the rails.
The critical message I took away from this is: A person, (with or without a penis) can have a heart pumping malfunction due to stress hormones (troponin) which are suddenly released as a result of a stressful event. The mis-pumping or firing of the heart muscle causes it to beat irregularly which makes breathing compromised and then the heart can stop beating or go into arrest. Coronary arteries will look unblocked and fine. So, the blood must be tested for troponin to catch this cardiomyopathy. More common to happen in a person without a penis. :D
brilliant @rebeccaryan. youve said it much better, thank you ;)
I'm a professional massage therapist in Canada. (This is a regulated health profession in the Province that I live in.) I have personally treated people who you'd never think would have heart health issues, but do. Often women don't present the same way men do when their heart muscle/organ becomes compromised. This can often be passed off as anxiety or issues with the thyroid or gall bladder. The end result is that people die. I beg people, "if you have unexplained chest pain or your chest feels tight, go to your hospital immediately".
For some its a life and death situation where it cant be ignored. Educating the population can save lives. Even in hospitals, we treat patients as real heart attacks till angiogram rule it out. Even strong anti-coagulants have its own side-effects and complications.
I believe life is very fast paced in today's modern new age. Females have always been considered inferior to males. Females have less career choices, less social standing and generally less education.
Traditionally boy meets girl and girl normally falls far more " in love " than the guy. This is evident when females find closeness and openness more necessary than a male does.
Over time the female generally passively allows the male into more decision making aspects of their combined lives. This is significantly magnified for the female if she chooses to take many years off to raise young children.
While just one year off might only cause a small bump in job or career aspects; if a female takes 3 years off this is now a major hurdle to reenter the workplace. Five years is often catastrophic to a females career.
Thus some females find it so emotionally catastrophic if something significant happens to their life partner then can literally die from a " broken heart ". Consider the stress of selling a house, divorce or loss of ability to continue your only trained occupation. Any one of these is very stressful, but for an isolated female who has not had any social support network for many years?
It might be bearable if the female has close friends or nearby family especially longer term and significantly around yearly significant anniversaries or holidays . . .
Do i sense a bit of sexism in here? Womenfolk have been successful in getting away from this way of thinking my friend. Dont want to disappoint you but am surrounded with strong women who are making decisions rather than their husbands. I can see that they want to pull their hair most times. Shalom.
Oh OK well not sure where you are living; I myself am living on planet Earth and to suggest that females have the same entitlements as males is simply bizarre.
Females are the most down trodden species on the planet, one just has to consider equal pay or other entitlements etc. All I might suggest is your surroundings are not anything like the average for women even in today's modern new age . . .
Thats a very caveman way of thinking and I find that very offensive.
OK...
I think the strong reaction may be because some of your comments generalize about women as a whole. However, you're talking about half of the Earth's population and the experiences of women in one country (eg) Sweden, one of the most gender-equal versus Afghanistan, one of the worst to be female, would vary widely. So the causes of why this type of heart attack affects women more often may not be that straightforward.
I'm glad to have read this article. It's interesting because I've only heard of one instance where someone died from this and it was a very young female who experienced a lot of stress. She wasn't "oppressed" in the traditional sense but a victim of financial fraud.
Our patients have had sudden stress occurring when admitted yes. It doesnt really matter where they are, who they are with. its an unpredictable response.