A patient comes crashing into the emergency room with severe chest pain…. So the patient is rushed to the cath lab, and they find… nothing. Clear coronaries. No blood clot. Further questioning reveals that the patient, an older woman, lost her husband recently. This is stress-induced cardiomyopathy, medically known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TC). It’s the pathophysiologic manifestation of a broken heart.
Despite being aware of it for decades, we still don’t really understand what the underlying processes are, though they probably have something to do with an excess of catecholamines.
Interestingly, women are much more likely to get a broken heart. But men are more likely to die from it…with an 11.2% mortality rate compared with 5.5% among women. This has also been increasing over time. There’s no clear explanation for the discrepancy. Men were more likely to develop the condition from physical, as opposed to emotional, stress, and that might change the risk profile.
Share this article
