It’s not just the joints that suffer, the cardiovascular system too. After a heart attack, patients with rheumatoid arthritis do worse than others.
The heart suffers in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. According to a study published in theEuropean Heart Journal, the latter are more at risk of presenting a severe acute coronary syndrome. The prognosis is also worse: people with this chronic rheumatic disease are more likely to die after a myocardial infarction than the general population.
Researchers at Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm (Sweden) selected 1,135 patients with rheumatoid arthritis and 3,184 control subjects from a national register of consultations for acute coronary syndrome between 2007 and 2010. In 80% of cases, in both groups of participants were admitted to the hospital with chest pain.
Overall, people with rheumatoid arthritis have more signs of cardiac distress and more sudden cardiac death than others. Thus, during treatment, patients in the control group less often benefited from treatment aimed at restoring blood circulation – such as bypass surgery, angiography or thrombolysis (66% versus 74% in the polyarthritis group). Conversely, the death rate is higher in the polyarthritis group at one week (10% vs. 6.7%) and at 30 days (15.7% vs. 10.7%).
“We hope that our results will raise awareness about this group of patients when evaluating patients at high risk for acute coronary syndrome,” comments Dr. Angla Mantel, co-author interviewed by Reuters Health. She also noted more chronic cardiovascular diseases among patients followed in rheumatology: stable angina pectoris, thromboembolic diseases, heart failure… The most probable track remains that of inflammation, known to promote cardiovascular diseases.
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