In recent research, a striking discovery was made about people who suffer from a sudden stop of their heart due to a drug overdose.
These individuals are generally younger and healthier than those who experience heart stoppage for other reasons.
This study, which sheds light on a growing public health concern, was released in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
The heart is like an engine that keeps our body running. When it stops suddenly, it’s called a cardiac arrest.
Every year, about 350,000 people in the United States have cardiac arrests outside of hospitals. Many of these are due to heart issues or heart attacks, but an increasing number are because of drug overdoses, particularly in adults aged 25 to 64.
People who survive a cardiac arrest often face serious health issues like brain damage or problems with their internal organs.
The new study, led by medical student Aditya C. Shekhar from Mount Sinai in New York, aimed to understand how drug overdose-related cardiac arrests are different from others.
Using data from a large national database called the Cardiac Arrest Registry to Enhance Survival (CARES), researchers analyzed over 360,000 cases of cardiac arrest between 2017 and 2021.
They found that 8% of these were due to drug overdoses, involving both accidental and intentional cases from various substances including medications, legal and illegal drugs, and alcohol.
Interestingly, the study found that people who had a cardiac arrest because of a drug overdose were more likely to survive and have fewer problems with their brain afterwards.
This is even though their hearts were often in a state not suitable for defibrillator treatment – a device used to shock the heart back into a regular rhythm.
When comparing people who had drug overdose-related cardiac arrests to those with other causes, there were noticeable differences.
Those with drug overdoses were younger, averaging 39 years old, compared to 64 years for others. They also had fewer health issues like diabetes, high blood pressure, or heart disease.
One of the senior researchers, Dr. Ryan A. Coute, expressed surprise at these findings.
He pointed out that the survival rates and brain health outcomes were better in patients with drug-related cardiac arrests, even after considering their younger age and fewer health problems.
However, there was a concerning aspect to these drug-related cases. Only 1 in 5 of them were witnessed by someone else. In contrast, nearly half of the cardiac arrests due to other causes had witnesses.
This is important because when someone sees a cardiac arrest happening, they can perform CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation).
CPR is a life-saving technique that keeps blood flowing to the brain, which is crucial as brain cells start dying within minutes without oxygen.
The team emphasized the importance of bystander CPR. He mentioned that performing CPR quickly can dramatically improve a person’s chances of surviving a cardiac arrest and maintaining good brain health.
If you care about heart disease, please read studies that herbal supplements could harm your heart rhythm, and how eating eggs can help reduce heart disease risk.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies that apple juice could benefit your heart health, and results showing yogurt may help lower the death risks in heart disease.
The research findings can be found in the Journal of the American Heart Association.
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