Even thought there is a greater awareness among people in the United States concerning the causes of heart disease, a new study says people who suffer heart attacks are getting younger and more obese than before, according to CBS News.
Findings from the study also revealed many of these patients had preventable risk factors, like high blood pressure and diabetes, and were more likely to be smokers.
Dr. Samir Kapadia, a professor of medicine and interventional cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, said in a statement the medical community had done an outstanding job of improving treatments for heart disease, but more needed to be done on the prevention side. “When people come for routine checkups, it is critical to stress the importance of reducing risk factors through weight reduction, eating a healthy diet and being physically active,” said Kapadia.
The research team analyzed data from almost 4,000 patients who were treated for the most severe type of heart attack, ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) at Cleveland Clinic for a period of years between 1995 through 2014. The results show the average age of those patients decreased from 64 during the first five years of the study, to 60 years of age in the final five years.
They also noted the prevalence of obesity increased from 31 percent to 40 percent over the same period, along with the number of patients with diabetes, from 24 to 31 percent. Those with high blood pressure increased from 55 to 77 percent and sufferers with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) rose from 5 to 12 percent.
Perhaps the most shocking discovery was the fact that the number of heart attack patients that were smokers also increased from 28 to 46 percent, bucking the overall trend across the country of declining smoking rates.
The study was limited just to patients in the Cleveland Clinic and may not be comparable across the entire country, and more research will be needed to verify an overall trend.
Nevertheless, experts were surprised at the findings. Dr. Kapadia said they though we were doing a better job of heart attack prevention. “Prevention must be kept in the forefront of primary care,” he added. “Cardiac health is not just dependent on the cardiologist. The primary care physicians and the patient need to take ownership of this problem.”