Obese Heart Attack Patients More Likely to Survive

European researchers have found that after studying the cases of more than 1600 patients who have had heart attacks that the obese patients have a better chance of surviving.

In the study, the obese patients tended to be younger and less likely to have suffered a previous heart attack, according to the article.

Despite the fact that the researchers say that the study provides no causal relationships, the above paragraph provides what I would believe is likely the reasons for the survival rate of the obese patients in the study.

In my view, having a previous heart attack and being older are better predictors of post-heart attack mortality than weight. At least, if I were a medical researcher, those are the variables I would be looking at in future studies.

Researchers in Germany and Switzerland found that among patients who had received initial treatment for a specific type of heart attack, those that were obese or very obese were less than half as likely to die during the following three years as patients who had a normal body mass index (BMI).

“Although there is no doubt that people who are overweight, obese and very obese have a higher risk of developing diabetes, hypertension and coronary artery disease, the evidence from our study shows once a coronary event has occurred and been optimally treated, obese patients switch to a more favorable prognosis compared to normal weight patients,” said Dr Heinz Buettner, head of interventional cardiology at Herz-Zentrum, Krozingen, Germany, who led the study.

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[edit on 2007/6/20 by GradyPhilpott]

The 1600 patients in the study had all suffered from a "certain type" of heart attack. This is a very specific group, when you consider the number of different types of myocardial event that can cause infarctions. the study does not state exactly what type of cardiac event caused the MI.

I can say from personal experience that if an MI happens in the pre-hospital environment, obese patients are more difficult to resus, due to the increased difficulty with chest compressions and reduced efficiency of defibrilation due to the larger muscle mass for shocks to pass through.

When releasing the results of studies such as these, care must be taken to ensure that adequate information is given to identify the causitive factors for heart attacks, one of the major ones being obesity. It's all well and good having a better post-episode prognosis, but it is much preferable to prevent the episode occurring in the first place.