Smoking Bans Cut MI Rate
Indoor smoking bans substantially cut heart attack rates in communities and may have an impact on sudden cardiac death as well, a population-based study showed.
Myocardial infarction (MI) incidence dropped 33% after implementation of ordinances banning smoking in restaurants and the workplace, Richard D. Hurt, MD, of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., and colleagues found.
Sudden cardiac death incidence declined by 17% in Olmsted County - where Mayo Clinic is located - with the laws, though not statistically significant at P=0.13 with the relatively low number of events, the group reported online in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
Other than the expected decline in smoking prevalence from making it less convenient, cardiovascular risk factors remained largely stable in the population there, supporting an effect of the bans themselves, they pointed out.
“Exposure to second-hand smoke should be considered a modifiable risk factor for MI,” they wrote. “All people should avoid second-hand smoke exposure as much as possible, and those with coronary heart disease should have no exposure to second-hand smoke.”
These additional data supporting smoke-free policies should encourage more locales to adopt them, Hurt and colleagues added.
“Second-hand smoke does matter, and the results of this study will help us to be able to move forward with policies and guidelines to be able to minimize second-hand smoke,” Lauren Whitt, PhD, of the University of Alabama at Birmingham, agreed in an interview with MedPage Today.
About how acute is the Heart Attack problem we can see analyzing actual stats on this disease. Below is a list of statistics from United States and worldwide which speak about the necessity to take action.
1.5 million Heart attacks occur in the United States each year with 500,000 deaths.
More than 233,000 women die annually from cardiovascular disease.
A heart attack occurs about every 20 seconds with a heart attack death about every minute.
Almost 14 million Americans have a history of heart attack or angina.
About 50% of deaths occur within one hour of the heart attack - outside a hospital.
There is a 6% to 9% early mortality from heart attack for those who survive long enough to reach the hospital.
Studies show the most common time for a heart attack to occur is Monday morning. Saturday morning ranks second. Another common time is during the early morning hours, when blood platelets are stickier.
Chewing an uncoated aspirin right away, at the first sign of chest discomfort or distress, can reduce the amount of damage to the heart muscle during a heart attack.
Costs related to heart attack exceed 60 billion dollars per year.
Heart attack is a leading killer of both men and women in the United States. Every 20 seconds one American suffers a Heart attack
More than 1000000 (1 million) Americans support a heart attack each year
More than 2 hours takes to a patient in most of cases to ask for medical attention. Sometimes, this is too long and irreversible heart muscle damages appear in myocardium
A big part of those suffering Heart Attacks survive and can continue their activities.
Other studies of smoke-free workplace and public place laws have pointed to declines in acute MI rates and hospitalizations, fewer asthma admissions among children, and improved quality of life, Sara Kalkhoran, MD, and Pamela M. Ling, MD, MPH, both of the University of California San Francisco, pointed out in an invited commentary.
“Moving forward, we should prioritize the enforcement of smoke-free policies, eliminating loopholes in existing policies as well as encouraging expansion of smoke-free policies to include multi-unit housing, motor vehicles, casinos, and outdoor locations,” they wrote.
“Clean air laws encompassing larger portions of the population will help to establish a cleaner bill of health for all.”
Olmsted County enacted a smoke-free restaurant law in 2002 and extended the ban to include all workplaces, including bars, in 2007.
Hurt’s group compared outcomes through records of the Mayo Clinic and the one other medical center serving the county in the Rochester Epidemiology Project.
The incidence of MI fell from 151 per 100,000 population in the 18-month period before either ordinance to 101 per 100,000 in the 18 months after both were into effect (P<0.001).
Heart attack rates fell 24 percent in California between 2000 and 2008, probably because of better care, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.
The study, in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the first large survey since the adoption of new treatments and medicines for preventing heart attacks. It examined more than 46,000 heart attack hospitalizations.
The decline, which reflects similar trends across the United States, follows bans on smoking in public places. Also, doctors have become better at treating high blood pressure and cholesterol.
Dr. Robert Yeh of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston and colleagues said the 24 percent drop was seen even though doctors can better detect heart attacks and despite the growing rates of diabetes and obesity, both of which raise the risk of heart attack.
“We would expect an increase in heart attacks because we’re picking up more heart attacks than we used to,” Yeh said in a telephone interview. “We found that, despite that, they are still going down.”
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By Gene Emery
BOSTON | Wed Jun 9, 2010 8:26pm EDT
Incidence of sudden cardiac death went from 109 to 92 per 100,000 population over the same period (P=0.13).
The researchers cited CDC data for Minnesota from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System showing a decline in smoking prevalence among adults from 20% in 2000 to 15% in 2010.