Higher education is associated with a reduced risk of developing heart failure after a heart attack, reports a study in more than 70 000 patients published today in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
“Heart failure is a serious complication of acute myocardial infarction and substantially increases the risk of death,” said lead author Dr Gerhard Sulo, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bergen in Norway.
He continued: “Previous research has shown that patients are more likely to die after a heart attack if they have a lower educational level, but information on the mechanisms involved is sparse. Heart failure is the most important incident in the chain of events leading to death after a heart attack and we hypothesised that it might contribute to the observed educational disparities in survival.”
The current study investigated the association between educational level and the risk of developing heart failure after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI). The study included 70 506 patients aged 35 to 85 years who had been hospitalised with a first (incident) AMI during 2001 to 2009 and did not have a history of heart failure. Patients were identified from the Cardiovascular Disease in Norway (CVDNOR) project, which contains data on all hospital stays with a cardiovascular disease-related diagnosis in Norway since 1994.2
Information on the highest attained education level was obtained from the Norwegian National Education Database. Education was categorised as primary (up to 10 years of compulsory education), secondary (high school or vocational school), or tertiary education (college/university)… Read More>>
Source: Medical Xpress
