Every year, at least one million adults in the UK go to their general practitioner (GP) because of chest pain. Often, these patients undergo various tests but still leave without understanding what’s causing their pain.
These cases of ‘unattributed’ chest pain put people at a higher risk of facing heart health issues later on, yet, surprisingly, very few get preventive treatments to avoid such outcomes.
Researchers at Keele University have made a significant leap forward in addressing this issue.
They’ve uncovered the major risk factors that make it more likely for someone with unexplained chest pain to develop heart and circulatory diseases in the future.
The aim is to help doctors quickly identify those who are most at risk and provide them with preventive measures like statins (a type of medication) and advice on lifestyle changes to ward off heart attacks and other serious health problems.
To do this, the research team created risk calculators that use the vast amount of information in patient health records to predict who is likely to develop heart and circulatory diseases.
They examined the anonymized health records of over 600,000 people from England who reported unattributed chest pain from 2002 to 2018.
By linking these records to hospital admissions and death records, they could see who ended up having serious heart issues. They kept an eye on these patients for at least five years.
Their findings pointed out that people with diabetes, atrial fibrillation (a type of heartbeat that’s irregular and often very fast), and those with treated high blood pressure were the ones who faced the highest risk.
Additionally, many of those at the greatest risk were either smokers or were living with obesity. The researchers calculated that if all the people in this high-risk group could quit smoking and lose weight, their chances of having heart problems in the next ten years would drop from nearly 22% to about 16%.
One critical insight from this study was that the current tools doctors use to predict heart disease risk might not be as reliable for people with unattributed chest pain.
The new risk model developed by the Keele researchers seemed to do a better job of identifying those at risk compared to the QRISK3, a widely used risk calculator, which seemed to underestimate the risk in this particular group.
Although the new risk calculator needs more work before GPs can start using it regularly, the findings open up new ways to prevent heart and circulatory diseases.
Identifying high-risk individuals early means that both doctors and patients can take action sooner to reduce these risks.
Professor Mamas Mamas, a leading figure in this research and a cardiology consultant, emphasized the importance of not ignoring chest pain without a clear diagnosis.
It’s a crucial sign that someone might need to make lifestyle changes to lower their risk of future health issues.
The hope is that this research will lead to better management of risk factors for people with unexplained chest pain, encouraging them to live healthier lives and prompting doctors to take early preventive measures.
Adding to the significance of this research, Professor Bryan Williams from the British Heart Foundation highlighted how using health data can revolutionize our approach to tackling major healthcare challenges.
This study’s insights into the risk factors for people with mystery chest pain could pave the way for preventing more heart issues, which is especially crucial considering the current pressures on the healthcare system.
If you care about heart health, please read studies that vitamin K helps cut heart disease risk by a third, and a year of exercise reversed worrisome heart failure.
For more information about heart health, please see recent studies about supplements that could help prevent heart disease, stroke, and results showing this food ingredient may strongly increase heart disease death risk.
The research findings can be found in European Journal of Preventive Cardiology.
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