Need an expert for American Heart Month?
February is American Heart Month, a time to highlight the top cause of death in Americans: heart disease. This year, the American Heart Association is highlighting the “Don’t Die of Doubt” awareness campaign, which focuses on reminding people that, even during the pandemic, hospitals are the safest place to go when symptoms of heart disease crop up.
Included is a list of researchers with expertise on a variety of topics related to heart health, heart medicine research and more. For more experts, contact Zach Richardson, MSU public relations manager, at richa954@msu.edu.
While COVID-19 has claimed more than 13,000 lives in Michigan, many more likely died from cardiac arrest directly and indirectly attributable to the pandemic, researchers report.
A new study examined out-of-hospital cardiac arrest records in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties from March 23 through May 31, 2020. Researchers compared those records to data for the same period in 2019 and found that the number of cardiac arrests that occurred outside of hospitals soared to 1,854 during the early months of the pandemic, a 60% increase over the same period the year before.
Deaths from cardiac arrest also increased to 1,400 cases, a 42% jump from the previous year.
The increase in cardiac arrests and deaths due to cardiac arrests likely is attributable to several factors, both directly and indirectly related to COVID-19, says J. Adam Oostema, an associate professor of emergency medicine in the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine and coauthor of the paper in
Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests increased during the pandemic
While COVID-19 has claimed more than 13,000 lives in Michigan, a study conducted by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and Michigan State University published in JAMA Network Open, suggests that many more likely died from cardiac arrest directly and indirectly attributable to the pandemic.
The study examined out-of-hospital cardiac arrest records in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties from March 23 through May 31, 2020. The researchers compared those records to data for the same period in 2019 and found that the number of cardiac arrests that occurred outside of hospitals soared to 1,854 during the early months of the pandemic, a 60 percent increase over the same period the year before. Deaths from cardiac arrest also increased to 1,400 cases, a 42 percent jump from the previous year.