Broken Heart Syndrome
Reported October 2, 2006
BALTIMORE (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) — Just about all of us have had our hearts broken at one time or another. Now, researchers from Johns Hopkins have discovered severe grief can cause a real medical condition that looks much like a heart attack — and is often misdiagnosed.
Pat Massof remembers all the good times she spent with her mother — who died last year. “She was just a great person to be around. We were best friends,” she says. “I lost my best friend, so it was very difficult, and it was something that I guess I just wasn’t prepared for.”
Massof also wasn’t prepared for what happened next. She had intense chest pains and went to her doctor. “She said, ‘Well Pat, you’ve just had a massive heart attack.’ And I said, ‘No way!'”
Then cardiologist Ilan Wittstein, M.D., diagnosed pat with “broken heart syndrome.” It happens when stress causes the body to release enough adrenaline to stun the heart. It looks like a heart attack but is much different.
“While the heart muscle looks very weak at the time that the person comes in, it fully recovers, and they’re left with no permanent damage,” Dr. Wittstein, of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, tells Ivanhoe.
In this image, the heart’s barely moving. But four days later, it’s beating normally. Grief or just about any stressful situation can trigger it.
Dr. Wittstein says, “We had one woman who was held up at gunpoint and had this happen.”
If you have intense chest pain after a stressful event, see your doctor right away. Broken heart syndrome is treated like a heart attack at first, but after a few days, you won’t need more therapies.
Massof worked on lowering her stress with yoga. “I feel a lot better today,” she says. It’s takes time — but she’s proof a broken heart really can be healed.
Dr. Wittstein estimates that about 2 percent of all heart attacks patients actually have broken heart syndrome — that’s about 30,000 of 1.5 million patients a year. He says the syndrome is more common in middle-aged, white women. By the way, the real clinical name for broken heart syndrome is stress cardiomyopathy, and you can die from it if you don’t get treatment.
If you would like more information, please contact:
David March
Public Relations
Johns Hopkins University
(410) 955-1534
http://www.brokenheartinfo.org