May 05, 2021
The combination of living in a disadvantaged neighborhood and being Black significantly raises the risk of death in the years after being discharged for an acute MI, new research shows.
“Patients from worse neighborhoods tended to have worse outcomes after acute myocardial infarction. This was seen across all races,” the study’s lead author, Jesse Goitia, MD (Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, CA), told TCTMD. “What particularly stood out was that African-American patients tended to have worse outcomes, but African-American patients from good neighborhoods did not. It seemed that the neighborhood was the mediating factor.”
“It makes sense,” Quinn Capers IV, MD (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas), chair of the ACC’s diversity and inclusion committee, commented to TCTMD. The study adds evidence, he said, to support the idea that the same social determinants of health that increase risks for having an MI things like crowde