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Women are More Likely To Have a Broken Heart, Men More Likely to Die From It
Takotsubo cardiomyopathy teaches us about the potentially fatal impact of extreme stress.
A patient comes crashing into the emergency room with severe chest pain. The EKG looks like this:
As a doctor, if you see this, you’re calling the cardiac cath lab. This is an ST-elevation myocardial infarction — the big one — indicative of a blood clot blocking blood flow to a large section of the heart. The sooner you get that blood clot out, the better chance the patient has to survive.
So the patient is rushed to the cath lab, and they find… nothing. Clear coronaries. No blood clot. Further questioning reveals the patient, an older woman, lost her husband recently. This is stress-induced cardiomyopathy, medically known as Takotsubo Cardiomyopathy or TC. It’s the pathophysiologic manifestation of a broken heart.
First described in 1991, Takotsubo syndrome occurs in the setting of deep psychological, emotional, or physical stress.
