Each year in the USA alone there 400,000 cases of cardiac arrests outside the confines of a hospital and according to Sudden Cardiac Arrest foundation, 9 out of 10 people will die from this type of cardiac arrest.
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“Cardiac arrest is recognized by the “bad company” it keeps, so the mantra has been: prevent [CAD], prevent sudden cardiac death”, Chugh said in a press release.
Although “sudden cardiac arrest” and “heart attack” often are used interchangeably, the terms are not synonymous.
(Reuters Health) overvallen Black Americans are more likely to have an impulsive cardiac arrest in comparison with their own neutral tone partner, new research advocates.
The incidence of sudden cardiac arrest among African-American men was 175 per 100,000 people, compared to 84 per 100,000 for Caucasian men.
Furthermore, blacks were significantly younger – by more than six years – than whites at the time of cardiac arrest.
“All of this work, this first step has been conducted in people who have a cardiac arrest”, he said. Among black women, the rate was 90 per 100,000 people, compared with 40 per 100,000 people among white women.
Black participants in the new study were also more likely to suffer cardiac arrest at a younger age than whites and to have known risk factors for heart disease, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and kidney disease, researchers found. “But there is no doubt that there are differences between the races when it comes to clinical outcomes”.
52 percent of African-American patients had diabetes, compared to 33 percent of Caucasian patients.
In addition, Dr. Venugopal Menon, of the Cleveland Clinic, notes, “What we have to know is that there are a lot of latent diseases that can manifest in sudden cardiac death and many of these are preventable, including high blood pressure”.
The study was led by Dr. Sumeet S. Chugh, associate director of the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles, CA, who examined data on residents in the metropolitan area of Portland, OR, who had sudden cardiac arrests between 2002 and 2012.
As the study found that black people had a higher prevalence of noncoronary cardiac risk factors for sudden cardiac arrests, it suggests identifying a broader spectrum of risk factors could help clinicians lower the sudden cardiac arrest burden in black people compared with other racial groups. “If we only focus on reducing coronary artery disease, we are unlikely to offer them the same benefit we offer white patients”.
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In the event of a cardiac arrest, blood flow to the vital organs of the body is interrupted since the heart stops beating and if the person is not given proper medical attention quickly, he could die within minutes. “This message, as well CPR instruction, should get out into all communities, including African American communities”, she says.
