Doctors at Tulane University Hospital and Clinic feel cases associated with cardiac arrest have tripled since the storm. A recent research has revealed that the hurricane is a major contributing factor to the spurt in the number of people suffering a heart attack in New Orleans.
Dr. Anand Irimpen, associate professor in the department of cardiology at Tulane University, the study’s lead author documented the number of people admitted to Tulane Medical Center two years before and after the storm.
A dramatic rise in heart attacks was observed. The figure jumped to 246 out of 11,282 patients after the reopening of the downtown hospital in early 2006, as opposed to 150 patients out of around 21,000 admitted to the hospital, prior to the storm. This amounted to an increase of about 2.2 percent in heart attacks.
Post Katrina, patients were found to need surgery or artery-opening procedures and were more prone to smoke, abuse drugs or consume alcohol, and less inclined to take medicine prescribed for strokes or heart attacks.
Dr. Carl "Chip" Lavie, medical director for cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at Ochsner Health System in suburban New Orleans stated "We've seen patients who had quit smoking and started again, patients who were exercising and say they haven't exercised since Katrina.”
Dr Irimpen felt the rise in heart attacks was co- related to inaccessibilty of proper medical facilities. This combined with stress, unemployment, lack of insurance and housing aggravated the condition.
“I think a lot of [the rise in heart attacks] is [because of] the stress and what everyone has to go through after Katrina. I think that emotional stress contributes to the neglect of health care because your priority is to find a place to live and food to eat, and a lot of people have lost health care and many doctors left for a time. ... There is a domino effect,” Irimpen said.
Dr. Anand Irimpen admitted the study is too small, involving only a small number of patients at a single hospital to establish a definite connection, leaving many questions unanswered.
Lavie pondered that "Is Tulane seeing more heart attacks now because of Katrina, or are the heart attacks coming to Tulane that would have gone someplace else before the storm?"
Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast of the United States in August 29, 2005, was the sixth strongest hurricane ever recorded and the third strongest that made landfall in the U.S. It was also one of the deadliest, implicated in the death of nearly 2,000 people.
The report is to be presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Orlando, Fla.
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