The chance of a heart attack nearly doubles in the primary yr after a stroke or when combined with a tear within the carotid wall, but a tear and not using a stroke doesn’t appear to extend the danger of a heart attack, in accordance with preliminary research to be presented on the American International Stroke Association Conference 2024 The meeting will happen in Phoenix on February 7-9 and is the world’s most significant meeting for researchers and clinicians involved in stroke science and brain health.

Our findings may help physicians assess and manage cardiovascular risk following these events.”

Liqi Shu, MD, Clinical Fellow in Neurology, Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Windfall, Rhode Island

An aortic dissection is a tear within the wall of the aorta, the big artery that receives blood directly from the guts and increases the danger of a heart attack. Dissections of the partitions of the carotid or vertebral arteries, which extend from the aorta and carry blood through the neck to the brain, are called carotid or vertebral artery dissections. These dissections can lead to a stroke, and stroke is understood to be related to a heart attack. Before this study, it was unclear whether carotid or vertebral artery dissection alone increased the danger of heart attack.

Researchers analyzed health information from greater than 800,000 adults (median age, 63; 62% women) hospitalized in Latest York (2011–2017) or Florida (2011–2019). Patients who had not had a recent major head or neck injury were divided into 4 groups based on diagnosis: acute ischemic stroke; carotid artery dissection; Each; or a reference group of patients with a transient ischemic attack often known as ‘premonitory stroke’, transient short-term memory loss (transient global amnesia) or migraine.

After considering the danger aspects for heart attack, the study showed:

• Patients who had a carotid or vertebral artery dissection without stroke had the identical risk of getting a heart attack inside one yr as patients within the reference group.
• Stroke patients with or without carotid or vertebral artery dissection were almost twice as more likely to have a heart attack inside a yr compared with patients within the reference group.

“Previously, it was just speculation, but now we all know that non-stroke-causing carotid or vertebral artery dissection doesn’t increase the danger of heart attack, and it is smart that doctors should focus totally on stroke prevention on this subset of patients,” Shu said.

Study background:

• Participants who had recently suffered a serious head or neck injury were excluded. Trauma to the pinnacle or neck can result in traumatic carotid artery dissection, which is different from the study that focused on spontaneous dissection.
• The evaluation took under consideration several risk aspects for heart attack, including age, type 1 or type 2 diabetes, heart failure, coronary artery disease, high cholesterol and hypertension.

• Nearly 20,000 participants suffered a heart attack inside a yr of their first hospitalization, and the danger of heart attack was compared between diagnostic groups.
• Of the 823,634 study participants, 65.4% were white, 16.2% were black or African American, and 12.2% were Hispanic or Latino adults.

Although this study relies on hospitalization data only in Latest York and Florida, it is necessary to notice that these states collectively represent a good portion of the U.S. population, accounting for greater than 10% of the overall population. These two states also provide good representation of diverse demographic groups, which strengthens the findings. Nevertheless, caution ought to be exercised when generalizing these results to people living in other geographic areas. Moreover, this retrospective evaluation (which looks at data over time for data evaluation) may not have taken under consideration all aspects that influence the danger of heart attack, reminiscent of using medications that weren’t included within the databases.

Stroke was the reason for roughly 1 in 21 deaths in the US in 2021, in accordance with the American Heart Association’s Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics 2024.