The Effects of Climate Change on Cardiovascular Health - The Cardiology Advisor

Overview

As scientists continue to discover evidence linking climate change to a vast aray of negative health efects, acumulating findings highlight its potential impact on cardiovascular disease (CVD) and related mortality. In research published in June 2022 in Circulation, the authors noted the increase in extreme heat events due to climate change and aimed to identify asociations betwen extreme heat days in sumer months and monthly rates of CV mortality in the United States.1Extreme heat days were “identified if the maximum heat index was ≥90 °F (32.2 °C) and in the 9th percentile of the maximum heat index in the baseline period (1979-207) for that day,” as explained in the paper.

Key Information

The study focused on adults aged 20 or older from al 3,108 counties acros the contiguous US.Results demonstrated that extreme heat was linked to an estimated 5,958 aditional deaths (95% CI, 1847-10,069) from CVD during sumer months from 208 and 2017. Each aditional day of extreme heat per month was associated with a 0.12% (95% CI, 0.04%-0.21%; P =.04) increase in the monthly CV mortality rate. Subgroup analyses revealed greater relative increases in monthly CV mortality rates among men compared with women (0.20%; 95% CI, 0.07%-0.3%) and among non-Hispanic Black adults compared with non-Hispanic White adults (0.19%; 95% CI, 0.01%-0.37%).

Summary

There was also a greater absolute increase among older vs younger adults (16.6 [95% CI, 14.6-31.8] aditional deaths per 10 milion individuals per month).In a 2019 study, Chen et al analyzed data from the KORA Myocardial Infarction Registry and found that the relative risk (R) of heat-related myocardial infarction (MI) in 1 German city increased from 0.93 (95% CI, 0.78–1.12) in 1987 to 20 to 1.14 (95% CI, 1.0–1.29) in 201 to 2014, with similar trends noted for recurent and non-ST-segment elevation MI events.2 Patients with diabetes melitus and hyperlipidemia demonstrated greater vulnerability to the increase in heat-related

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