Why pre-existing conditions impact on heart attacks

NEW RESEARCH has revealed the “devastating” impact that preexisting health conditions can have on the chances of surviving a heart attack.

A study by academics at the University of Leeds suggests that a lack of guidelines on the treatment of heart attack patients who have two or more pre-existing condition could be behind some patients dying earlier.

Researches looked at how “multimorbidity” affected survival rates by examining the records of almost 700,000 people in England and Wales who had had a heart attack.

Almost 60 per cent of those patients had at least one pre-existing health condition at the time of their heart attack.

The researchers found that clusters of certain chronic conditions, including diabetes, asthma, kidney failure and high blood pressure, could affect how long people lived after cardiac arrest.

Existing heart attack treatment guidelines to not extend to people with multiple pre-existing illnesses. It is hoped the research, published in the journal PLOS

Medicine, will lead to better treatment methods as an ageing population leads to larger numbers of heart attack patients with multiple underlying health conditions.

Dr Marlous Hall, from the Leeds Institute of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Medicine and who led the research project, said: “Now we have an idea of how certain chronic conditions group together in heart attack patients, we can target research at those groups of diseases to try and improve treatment options.

“Previous research has focused on the interplay between heart attack and single long-term conditions but as the population gets older, more and more people who experience a heart attack are already suffering from a number of other illnesses.

“Further research needs to focus on the way those other illnesses may complicate recovery from a heart attack.”