Study Shows That Broken Heart Syndrome Can Kill

Unresolved grief could have a devastating effect on your health. For generations it has been said that people who collapsed and died soon after a severe personal loss just died of a “broken heart.” The cause was probably stress cardiomyopathy, which is now often referred to as “broken heart syndrome.” New research, however, indicates this acute heart failure triggered by stressful events is more common than first thought.

Stress cardiomyopathy (SC) has been known to primarily affect postmenopausal women and is characterized by acute, profound, but reversible left ventricular (LV) dysfunction in the absence of significant coronary artery disease, according to the study published in a recent issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

The condition can be difficult to diagnosis, according to the report from researchers at the University of Leipzig, Germany. However, it appears that patients with SC were an average age of 69 years old and 89 percent (227) were women.

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