Heart disease is the number-one cause of death in people over 65. About five million people in the U.S. have heart failure, and almost 250,000 die each year because of it.
But a new study just released gives cause for hope. There is another way to prevent heart disease from being fatal, besides the usual methods of better diet and exercise.
According to the study, knowledge of a person’s health can help emergency-response services more effectively deal with a heart attack.
It seems that chronic conditions can interfere with your recovery rate if you go into cardiac arrest.
Dr. Thomas Rea and team studied the emergency medical service reports of 1043 patients. These patients had all suffered out-of-hospital heart attacks.
The researchers found that for those with a chronic condition, the chances of survival were lowered. For every chronic condition, survival rates were reduced by 16%.
Researchers also found out that a patients’ ability to survive was directly related to emergency response times. For those with chronic conditions, survival rates dropped by 28% when the emergency-response time was eight minutes. When the emergency-response time was three minutes, survival rates dropped by only 5%.
Dr. Rea commented that “cardiac arrest is a major public health problem causing hundreds of thousands of deaths each year in North America and Europe. On average we are able to resuscitate less than 10% of persons in most communities.”
Dr. Rhea and his team hope that understanding how chronic conditions affect resuscitation will allow EMS to tailor care to individual patients. This, in turn, could really improve resuscitation rates.
If you have a chronic condition, let others know what you are dealing with. If you have a MedicAlert bracelet, wear it at all times.
Protect your heart from disease by eating a balanced, healthy diet and exercising every day.
Make sure you are meeting the RDIs for folic acid, vitamin C, calcium, magnesium, potassium, and selenium.
All of these vitamins and minerals can be found in fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
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Tags: diet, Heart Attack
