Americans are dying suddenly from heart attacks at home at alarming rates, doctors warn.
Researchers at Mass General Brigham, a Harvard-affiliated hospital, have found that heart-related deaths have increased by 17 percent in the years following the Covid pandemic.
And although the exact number is not known, in many of these cases, heart attacks have occurred at home, while deaths in hospitals have decreased.
This suggests that patients are being "neglected" — until it's too late.
Dr Jason H Wasfy, study author and director of Outcomes Research at Massachusetts General Hospital, said: “Many reports have shown that there have been fewer heart attacks in hospitals since 2020 — but something seems to be missing from this data.”
“We now show that if we count deaths at home, cardiac deaths are increasing and have remained high for years. Today there are many more people dying from cardiac causes at home, which also raises concerns that people with heart disease are not getting the care they need since the pandemic.”
The Covid virus — which is thought to have infected over 100 million Americans — has been shown to cause damage to the heart and blood vessels, which could be a factor.
But doctors say other factors, which are still being understood, must also be at play — including diet and lifestyle.
For example, a study this week found that smoking marijuana or consuming its products may increase the risk.
Although the full results have not yet been released, experts believe the pandemic may also be linked to a mysterious increase in heart attacks among young Americans.
The study, published Friday in JAMA Network Open, analyzed 127,746 death certificates from people who died in Massachusetts between January 2014 and July 2024.
The average age was 77 years old and about 52 percent were men.
The researchers then created population estimates based on U.S. Census data from 2014 to 2023.
Using death certificate data and Census data, the team determined an expected cardiac death rate for the period 2020-2023.
They found that cardiac deaths were 16 percent higher than expected in 2020, 17 percent higher in 2021 and 2022, and six percent higher in 2023.
Most monthly cardiac deaths at home also exceeded expected levels between 2020 and 2022, and in hospitals between 2020 and 2023.
However, they cited additional data showing that hospitalizations for heart attacks decreased by 20 to 34 percent after the pandemic began. This suggests that many of these excess deaths occurred at home.
The researchers wrote: “In this population-based study of deaths in Massachusetts, we found that cardiac deaths increased significantly starting in 2020, with exaggerated seasonal patterns and an increase in deaths at home.
"While many other studies have found fewer cardiac emergency admissions in different countries around the world, these studies may have missed events that occur outside hospitals."
Researchers suggested that this increase could be due to more people avoiding hospitals during the pandemic or being ignored by doctors.
CDC research from 2020, for example, found that 40 percent of Americans delayed or avoided seeking medical care at the beginning of the pandemic, and 12 percent stayed away from emergency rooms.
However, new research is also showing that the Covid virus itself can cause long-term heart problems, increasing the risk of cardiac deaths.
Covid has been linked to myocarditis, inflammation of the heart muscle, and pericarditis, inflammation of the sac-like lining that surrounds the heart.
In myocarditis, it is thought that Covid causes the immune system to attack itself and cause inflammation of the myocardium, the heart muscle.
This same mechanism has also been linked to pericarditis.
While most cases are mild, in rare cases, myocarditis can damage the heart and make it difficult to pump blood, eventually leading to heart failure, heart attack, and stroke.
In cases as rare as one in 200,000, the mRNA of Covid vaccines can trigger a similar immune response and cause myocarditis or pericarditis.
Inflammation caused by Covid also alters the heart's electrical signals, leading to irregular heartbeats called arrhythmias.
Research published this week also showed that smoking marijuana or consuming its products at least three times a week could be a possible cause of heart attacks.
That team found that endothelial cells, which line blood vessels and regulate blood flow, released less nitric oxide in people who drank or smoked marijuana regularly.
Nitric oxide helps blood vessels dilate and deliver vital oxygen to the body.
This impaired function affects the ability of blood vessels to dilate, increasing the risk of atherosclerosis, heart attacks, and strokes.
Dr John Hsu, lead author of the new study and director of the Program for Clinical Economics and Policy Analysis at Mass General, said: “Healthcare systems around the world have experienced multiple shocks since 2020. Our findings suggest that both patients’ choices to seek care, and outcomes following a cardiac emergency, have changed.
"Had we not examined deaths using death certificate data, increases in population cardiac mortality may have gone unnoticed."
There were some limitations to the study, including a lack of data on the causes leading to cardiac deaths. It is not known when the full results will be published.
The study was funded in part by the National Institutes of Health. /Express newspaper/
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