Life Expectancy After a Heart Attack Might Depend on Where You Reside

The chance of survival after a heart attack could also be influenced by the patient's neighborhood resources, say researchers.

According to the CDC, every year, about 805,000 Americans have a heart attack. About 1 in 5 heart attacks is silent. A study by Kaiser Permanente Health care company evaluated the effects of neighborhood resources on survival after a heart attack and revealed that black patients from disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to die within five years after a heart attack than white patients.

‘Black patients with neighborhood disadvantages were more likely to die soon after a heart attack than white patients.’

"All patients in this study had equal access to medical care and were treated at the same medical facilities, but despite comparable health care access, Black patients from lower resourced neighborhoods still had higher mortality compared to white patients. This study suggests that social and environmental factors can affect a person's outcome after a heart attack, and where a person lives can have a powerful impact on health outcomes," said Dr.Mingsum Lee, the senior author of the research.

For this, a group of researchers analyzed records from 31,275 patients who got treatment for a heart attack in a Kaiser Permanente hospital in Southern California between 2006 and 2016.

Based on 17 factors that reflect education, income, employment, and household characteristics, the team assigned a neighborhood disadvantage score for each patient. They examined the patient over an average of 5 years.

The analysis revealed that black patients from lower-resourced neighborhoods were 19% more likely to die than white patients from those same neighborhoods. However, black patients from well-resourced neighborhoods showed similar survival outcomes to white patients from those same neighborhoods.

"These findings may be of particular interest to health systems since most health systems invest heavily to improve the quality of care provided to heart attack patients within the medical system. However, what this study shows is that a patient's post-discharge environment also matters when it comes to long-term health outcomes," concluded Dr. Lee.

The research paper regarding the study was published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology .

Source: Medindia