Broken Heart Syndrome: Increasing among women and appears to be more severe

Since we entered the third year of the pandemic we know well that Covid-19 affects not only the infection itself, but affects many areas. We obviously experienced that the stress of living under the pandemic can have long-lasting side effects. However, for women this stress can be life threatening.

A new study from the Cleveland Clinic has found that broken heart syndromea serious heart condition caused by emotional stress, is increased for women during the pandemic. Although the data is still being collected, the study suggests that the increase has passed 2% to 18% during these pandemic years. We can say that this condition is very common for women and it is therefore important to better understand the risk factors.

Broken heart syndrome, women during the pandemic suffer the most

The name of this condition may seem a bit trite, but it doesn’t get any more true. IS a kind of heart attack and like any other heart attack it can cause symptoms such as shortness of breath, chest pain and abnormal heart rhythms, but the mechanisms are quite different. The types of heart attacks depend on the blockage of a heart artery which damages the organ. Stress cardiomyopathy or broken heart syndrome does not involve blocked arteries. It can be quite life-threatening, but as it is easier for people to recover, you can survive more compared to other heart conditions.

The syndrome was First described in 1990. The Japanese researchers who identified it dubbed the syndrome “Takotsubo”, because the shape of the left ventricle on an angiogram resembles the namesake ceramic vessel used to catch octopuses in the ocean. What is actually causing stress-induced heart attacks is not entirely clear, Stress affects our body in many other ways, such as headache at the end of a day, high blood pressure or artery problems. There is a hypothesis but it has not yet been proven that stress hormones can cause the blood vessels of the heart to spasm.

Heart attacks of all kinds they tend to increase due to a major stressful event, such as after 9/11 or a natural disaster. Of course, emotional stress isn’t the only cause. Physical stress can also contribute; for example it is not uncommon for people with other physical conditions to have this type of heart attack. So while pandemic stress is almost certainly contributing to the numbers, the surge could also be linked to the Covid-19 infection itself or people delaying treatment for other medical problems during the pandemic.

Image by Martin Büdenbender from Pixabay