Health Matters
Having a heart attack significantly increases the risk of developing other serious long-term health conditions, a major new study shows.
Researchers at the University of Leeds have analysed more than 145 million records covering every adult patient admitted to hospital over a nine-year period to establish the risk of long-term health outcomes following a heart attack — in the largest study of its kind.
Whilst heart attacks are a serious and life-threatening condition, the British Heart Foundation estimates that nowadays more than seven in 10 people survive them, provided they receive quick and emergency treatment to get the blood flowing to the heart muscle again. Yet previous research has shown that heart attacks can have health implications for patients including further conditions which affect the heart and circulatory system, but also conditions affecting other parts of the body and mental health conditions.
The new research shows that patients who had a heart attack went on to develop further conditions at a much higher rate than people of the same age and sex who had not had one.
Up to a third of patients went on to develop heart or kidney failure, 7% had further heart attacks and 38% died from any cause within the nine-year study period.
Heart failure, atrial fibrillation, stroke, peripheral arterial disease, severe bleeding, kidney failure, type 2 diabetes and depression all occurred more frequently for people who had a heart attack compared with those who did not; but the risk of cancer was lower overall, and the risk of dementia did not differ overall.
The study also identified that people from more socioeconomically deprived backgrounds were more likely to die or develop serious long-term health conditions following a heart attack. In particular, those from more deprived backgrounds were more likely to develop heart and kidney failure, compared to people from less deprived backgrounds of a similar age.
Lead author Dr Marlous Hall, Associate Professor of Cardiovascular Epidemiology in Leeds’ School of Medicine and Multimorbidity Research in the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA), said: “There are around 1.4 million heart attack survivors in the UK who are at high risk of developing further serious health conditions. Our study provides accessible online information of the risk of these health outcomes for specific age, sex and socioeconomic deprivation groups so that individuals surviving a heart attack can be well informed about their future risks, in order to support informed healthcare decision making with their doctor.
“Effective communication of the likely course of disease and risk of adverse long-term outcomes between patients and healthcare professionals can promote positive lifestyle changes, encourage patients to stick to treatment, and improve patient understanding and quality of life.”
“Our study highlights the need for individual care plans to be revised to take into account the higher demand for care caused by survivorship.”
The researchers analysed the records of all individuals aged 18 years and over, who were admitted to one of 229 NHS Trusts in England between 1 January 2008 and 31 January, 2017. This amounted to 145,912,852 hospitalisations among 34,116,257 individuals. There were 433,361 reports of people who had a heart attack for the first time. The average age of heart attack patients was 67 years, and 66% of patients were male.
The study looked at 11 non-fatal health outcomes detailed below, plus death from any cause, and compared the results to a control group of 2,001,310 individuals.
