Heart attack deaths plummet in just 6 years

Associated Press ^ | May 1, 2007

[RWR8189]

CHICAGO - In just six years, death rates and heart failure in hospitalized heart attack patients have fallen sharply, most likely because of better treatment, the largest international study of its kind suggests.

The promising trend parallels the growing use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, powerful blood thinners, and angioplasty, the procedure that opens clogged arteries, the researchers said.

“These results are really dramatic, because, in fact, they’re the first time anybody has demonstrated a reduction in the development of new heart failure,” said lead author Dr. Keith Fox, a cardiology professor at the University of Edinburgh.

The six-year study involved nearly 45,000 patients in 14 countries who had major heart attacks or dangerous partial artery blockages. The percentage of patients who died in the hospital or who developed heart failure was nearly cut in half from 1999 to 2005.

And the heart attack patients treated most recently were far less likely to have another attack within six months of being hospitalized when compared to the patients treated six years earlier — a sign that the more aggressive efforts of doctors in the last few years are working.

There have been other signs that better treatment of heart patients has been saving lives, but not on a scale as large as this international study, the researchers said.

“It’s much more dramatic than we expected, in the course of six years,” Fox said.

[ICE-FLYER]

I blame Bush

[EGPWS]

The promising trend parallels the growing use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, powerful blood thinners, and angioplasty, the procedure that opens clogged arteries, the researchers said.

Naw, it's gotta' be ridding us of transfats, raising taxes on cigarette's, democrat control in Congress, and the hope of leaving the focus on the WOT./s

[Paleo Conservative]

You beat me.

[Strategerist]

Wow, it wasn’t herbal remedies and vitamins?

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

***The promising trend parallels the growing use of cholesterol-lowering drugs, powerful blood thinners, and angioplasty, the procedure that opens clogged arteries, the researchers said. ***

I resemble those statements.

[MrCFdovnh]

"The percentage of patients who died in the hospital or who developed heart failure was nearly cut in half from 1999 to 2005."

All I can say is thank God for jumper cables because I was in the "died in the hospital" category for a short time.

[hinckley buzzard]

All I can say is thank God for jumper cables...

You probably heard about the guy who walked into a bar one day with a set of jumper cables around his neck. The bartender said "You can drink here, but just don't start anything."

[RichardW]

My own personal opinion is that it is the cholesterol lowering drugs. The results are dramatic and this seems to bear it out. Obviously smoking is horrible and being overweight certainly doesn’t help, but consider all of the skinny people who keeled over with heart attacks in recent decades before the advent of cholesterol drugs. I don’t think this is a coincidence. And furthermore I think the ones warning against the drugs are nothing more than fast buck charlatans.

[dangus]

>> I blame Bush <<

Oh, Bush will be blamed, all right. The lower rates of heart attack deaths mean that more people will survive long enough to die of cancer, and other ailments which will be blamed on his environmental policies.