Missed warning signs by physicians lead to 1 in 6 heart attack deaths in England

New research from the Imperial College London has shown a significant number of heart attack deaths that could have been prevented if there had been better risk screening by physicians.

The study, published in The Lancet Public Health, has prompted researchers to call for further research that could help outline better methods and practices for identifying heart attack risks and preventing unnecessary deaths.

Investigators examined records of more than 446,000 hospital stays in England between 2006 and 2010 that were related to heart attacks, as well as the hospitalization history of more than 135,000 people who died from one.

Researchers were looking for if patients who had died from a heart attack had been to the hospital in the four weeks prior and if signs of a heart attack were recorded as the main cause for the admission.

Of those who died from a heart attack, about half of them died without a hospital admission in the last four weeks and the other half died within four weeks of being admitted to the hospital. However, of those who had been admitted to a hospital in the four weeks leading up to their death, 16 percent did not have heart attack symptoms listed on their hospital record.

Additional data from the study showed that of the patients admitted with a heart attack, those who had it recorded as a secondary condition to the primary one were two to three times more likely to die than patients whose primary condition was listed as a heart attack.

The authors wrote that more research is needed to examine why instances of physicians missing heart attack symptoms in patients happens so frequently.

“Doctors are very good at treating heart attacks when they are the main cause of admission, but we don't do very well treating secondary heart attacks or at picking up subtle signs which might point to a heart attack death in the near future,” said Perviz Asaria, MD, the lead author on the study and a professor at Imperial College London, in a statement. “Unfortunately in the four weeks following a hospital stay, nearly as many heart attack deaths occur in people for whom heart attack is not recorded as a primary cause, as occur after an admission for heart attack.”