Hospitalization for pneumonia is risky business

Patients at significant risk for heart disease: Study

OTTAWA — Patients who have been hospitalized for pneumonia are at significantly higher risk for heart disease, even if they had no history of heart trouble, an Ottawa-led research team has discovered.

According to a paper by the researchers published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on Tuesday, pneumonia patients 65 and older are four times more likely to develop heart disease in the 30 days following infection.

And even after 10 years, patients who were hospitalized for pneumonia were still more likely to develop heart disease.

Lead author Vicente Corrales-Medina, an infectious diseases physician and researcher at The Ottawa Hospital, said pneumonia hospitalization is similar or even higher in magnitude as a risk for heart disease than traditional factors such as smoking, diabetes and hypertension.

The study was done in collaboration with Sachin Yende, a pulmonologist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh. It examined the records of 3,813 patients split into two age groups — 65 and older and 45 to 64 — over a 10-year period.

Corrales-Medina said the risk for heart disease 10 years after infection for a 72-yearold woman who smokes and has hypertension increases to 90 per cent from 31 per cent if she has been hospitalized for pneumonia.

Just how pneumonia could lead to heart disease remains unclear.

But in the paper published Tuesday, Corrales-Medina and Yende note that studies have linked inflammation from infections with cellular changes in the lesions, or plaques, that form on artery walls. Persistent inflammation is common among recovering pneumonia patients.