Stress, anxiety, the attacks marked the French population. Researchers have been interested in the link between this stress and the number of cardiac surgery hospitalizations after the attacks.
Three waves of attacks hit France between 2015 and 2016. Charlie Hebdo, Hyper Kosher, Montrouge, Nice, Bataclan, these attacks left 233 dead and hundreds injured. But also stressed and anxious by the scale of these tragic events and their significant media coverage. Several researchers from Public Health France, led by Edouard Chatignoux, were interested in the impact of these events on the number of hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases. An article published in the Weekly Epidemiological Bulletin.
Acute emotional stress
Acute emotional stress can cause cardiovascular pathologies, such as tachycardia, increased blood pressure or ischemia, a sharp increase in oxygen consumption. All of this can lead to a heart attack or stroke.
A study was carried out in a clinic in Toulouse after the attacks of January 2015. It showed a 75% increase in hospitalizations for cardiovascular diseases, and 180% for myocardial infarctions.
Sudden deaths rather than hospitalizations
Researchers from Public Health France focused on three pathologies: acute coronary syndrome, heart failure and stroke. The study was carried out in two geographical areas for two periods: for 2015, Ile-de-France and the rest of France and, for 2016, the Alpes-Maritimes and the rest of France. It focused on short-term research, for the fifteen days following, in each case, the attack.
Experts have not found a significant increase in the number of hospitalizations for heart problems during these periods. According to them, it would be interesting to study the number of sudden deaths that could be linked to the emotional stress that followed the attacks.
These sudden deaths, which occur outside of any hospitalization, could explain the lack of results for this study.
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