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 Older adults who smoke are also more likely than non-smokers their
age to end up with heart attacks, researchers say.
Many people underestimate the health risks that come with smoking,
said senior author Dr. Ever Grech, of the South Yorkshire
Cardiothoracic Center at the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield.
"Many patients seem aware there are some risks of a heart attack
with smoking, but they were blissfully unaware that the risks were
anything more than slightly higher than usual," Grech told Reuters
Health.
Smoking has been tied to an increased risk of cardiovascular
problems since the 1950s, Grech and his colleagues write in the
journal Heart. Smokers have heart attacks at younger ages, but no
study has looked at the incidence of heart attacks among young
smokers in a local population.
For the new study, the researchers used data collected between 2009
and 2012 on people over age 18 in South Yorkshire. The population
included 1,727 individuals who were treated for STEMIs, which are
major heart attacks caused by a blockage in one of the heart's main
arteries. About 49 percent of the STEMI patients were current
smokers, about 27 percent were ex-smokers and about 24 percent were
never smokers.
Applying the results to the South Yorkshire population, the
researchers calculated that in a group of 100,000 people, 60 smokers
under age 50 would have a heart attack every year, compared to a
combined total of 7 never-smokers and former smokers in that age
group.
The difference is equal to about an eight-fold increase in risk for
young smokers, compared to non-smokers.
Likewise, the researchers found about a five-fold increase in risk
among smokers ages 50 to 65 years and about a three-fold increase in
risk among smokers over age 65 years, compared to their non-smoking
peers.
Grech said the findings confirmed his observations from working in a
cardiac catheterization laboratory, where doctors open clogged
arteries in patients with STEMIs.
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"We can use this data to make people better aware of the risks and
provide positive encouragement and assistance," he said.
The increased risk among smokers likely arises because smoking
affects the plasticity of arteries and what happens inside them,
said Dr. Umesh Khot, who is vice chair of cardiovascular medicine at
the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
"The harms of smoking in terms of heart attacks of patients who
smoke will happen a lot sooner than people think," said Khot, who
wasn't involved with the new study.
He said it's never to late to quit smoking to reap some health
benefits.
"For this type of heart attack known as STEMI, the risk drops off
very fast," he told Reuters Health.
In an editorial accompanying the new study, Dr. Yaron Arbel of Tel
Aviv Medical Center in Israel called for society to play a more
active role in preventing and treating smoking habits in the general
population through medical, legislative, commercial and educational
efforts.
"Without all these efforts, we will not reduce the risks associated
with smoking," he wrote.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2gumabl Heart, online November 29, 2016.
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