Q: My 62-year-old aunt recently was hospitalized for something called broken heart syndrome, where seemingly healthy people have heart attacks after traumatic events. What is this, and what do doctors know about it?
A: A strong emotional or physical stress can trigger heart-attack-like symptoms such as chest pain and shortness of breath. The condition, which should be treated with the same urgency as a heart attack, has been dubbed broken heart syndrome.
The more official medical terms for the condition are stress-induced cardiomyopathy or left ventricular apical ballooning syndrome. When it occurs, the tip of the left ventricle, the heart’s main pumping chamber, balloons out and weakens. Broken heart syndrome occurs most often in postmenopausal women.
The symptoms of stress-induced cardiomyopathy are real and potentially dangerous. Low blood pressure, shock, heart failure and heart rhythm abnormalities may occur. Rarely, it can be deadly.
Doctors treat broken heart syndrome much as they would a heart attack. The goal is to stabilize the patient as quickly as possible. With prompt care, most patients with broken heart syndrome fully recover. Broken heart syndrome doesn’t permanently damage the heart, as would a heart attack, because there’s usually no arterial blockage. In a heart attack, sudden arterial blockage can cause permanent heart damage or even death.
Broken heart syndrome was first identified by Japanese researchers about 15 years ago, but the condition is probably not new. I can remember patients 20 years ago with these circumstances who were diagnosed with heart artery spasm. On an electrocardiogram, broken heart syndrome looks like a heart attack. It takes an angiogram – an invasive X-ray study – for doctors to distinguish a heart attack from stress- induced cardiomyopathy.
Research is underway to learn more about the condition and what causes it. The syndrome is likely related to a large surge of adrenaline in the blood due to the stress.
– Dr. John Bresnahan, cardiologist, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minn. Write to: medicaledge@ mayo.edu, or Medical Edge from Mayo Clinic, c/o TMS, 2225 Kenmore Ave., Suite 114, Buffalo, N.Y., 14207. mayoclinic.com.
