Researchers are still groping in the dark to understand what physical processes cause it, but believe that a sudden emotional stress can trigger it. The disease is often indistinguishable from a heart attack initially, but, unlike a heart attack, it involves no lasting damage to the heart muscle.
Dr. Richard Regnante, an interventional cardiology
define fellow at Miriam Hospital and the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, said, “When people get this, it’s usually a good thing. You think they’re having a heart attack. It turns out it’s something we know has a very good prognosisdefine.”
Dr Regnante and colleagues created a registry of 70 patients who met the definition of Takotsubo out of 19,180 patients who were diagnosed with cardiacdefine catheterization between July 2004 and April 2008 at Miriam and Rhode Island Hospital.
With an exception of three, all the patients were women in the age group of 56-78 years. Around 20 percent of them were critically ill and required emergency medical intervention to keep them alive.
The researchers observed that the syndrome often followed a stressful event. It could be an emotional or physical trauma, may be depressing news before being hospitalized.
Dr Regnante said, "It can be difficult for cardiologists and emergency room physicians to diagnose and manage patients with broken heart syndrome. However, this data will help us better understand the disease process and could play a major role in developing and tailoring more effective short- and long-term treatment strategies.”
He further stated, “Clearly some of the patients can get really sick from it. They can die in that acute setting. But, in the patients that we can support in the first 48 hours, they do fine. They do very very well.”
Another intriguing feature was that, for some unforeseen reason, the disease acquired acute proportions in summer. Also, it was observed that people taking ACE inhibitors before the incident were less likely to suffer severe effects as shock and heart-rhythm problems.
In spite of the critical nature of broken heart syndrome, if administered prompt medical care, the patient's prognosis is very good. Some patients recover completely after two weeks, with no potential damage to the heart muscle. Recouping from a heart attack, in comparison, takes several weeks and months, sometimes causing permanently damage to the heart muscles.
The disease was first described in 1991 in Japan and it was called “Takotsubo Syndrome” (tako – octopus; tsubo – trap). The condition gained attention in the United States only a few years ago. Some believe that it is not a new disease, but has got recognition due to the availability of cardiac investigations such as echocardiography, coronary angiography and biochemical tests.
A report is published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Cardiology.
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