Heart Attack Patients Are Getting Younger And More Obese Each Year, Study Finds

Heart attack patients in the United States are getting younger and more obese each year, according to a new study from the Cleveland Clinic. The researchers said that the sufferers were aware of risk factors for the disease, but they simply chose to ignore them.

The Daily Mail reports that the study, which was presented at the American College of Cardiology's 65th Annual Scientific Session, found that the number of heart attack patients has been constantly rising since 1995. They also discovered that the average age of sufferers has dropped from 64 to 60 in past two decades, while the prevalence of obesity among patients has risen from 31 percent to 40 percent.

The researchers conducted the study by focusing on the heart disease risk factors of over 3,900 patients, who had been admitted at the Cleveland Clinic from 1995 to 2014, for suffering a full blown heart attack known as ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). They examined the age and the Body Mass Index of the heart attack patients, and investigated lifestyle factors like smoking, eating habits and physical activities.

"Very amazingly, what we found was the patients presenting with ST-elevation myocardial infarction were getting younger," Dr. Samir Kapadia, lead researcher and professor of medicine and interventional cardiologist at Cleveland Clinic, told CBS News. "We thought we were doing better prevention."

Kapadia and his team also found that the number of patients having three or more major risk factors has increased from 65 percent to 85 percent. With this, they are urging the entire medical community to act conjointly for the trend to be reversed.

"Prevention must be kept in the forefront of primary care," Kapadia stated. "Cardiac health is not just dependent on the cardiologist. The primary care physicians and the patient need to take ownership of this problem."

Commenting on the findings, Dr. Mary Norine Walsh, vice president of the American College of Cardiology, said that the study is not enough to generalize the whole U.S. population because it only focused on patients at the Cleveland clinic. Walsh added that further studies, involving large population groups and more hospitals, should be conducted to support the recent findings.