Death of a family member may increase heart failure mortality risk

Heart failure patients experiencing grief or in mourning following the loss of a close family member are at an increased risk of death, particularly during the first week following the family member's death, according to a study published today in JACC: Heart Failure.

Many studies have also been conducted to confirm the relationship between severe emotional stress and Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, also known as "broken heart syndrome." This study is one of the first to investigate the association between bereavement and Heart failure risk.

The study authors looked at almost 500,000 patients from the Swedish Heart Failure Registry during 2000-2018 and/or patients with a primary diagnosis of heart failure from the Swedish Patient Register during 1987-2018. Information on date and cause of family member deaths (children, spouse/partner, grandchildren, siblings and parents) was obtained from the Cause of Death Register.

A total of 58,949 study participants experienced bereavement during the mean 3.7 years of follow-up. The association between bereavement and increased HF mortality risk was observed after death of a child (a 10% increased risk), spouse/partner (a 20% increased risk), grandchild (a 5% increased risk) or sibling (a 13% increased risk), but not after death of a parent.

The risk of dying from HF after the loss of any family member was highest during the first week of bereavement (a 78% increased risk), particularly in the case of death of a child (a 31% increased risk) or spouse/partner (a 113% increased risk); it was also higher in the case of two losses (a 35% increased risk) as opposed to one loss (a 28% increased risk).

The association between bereavement and mortality was not only observed in cases of loss due to cardiovascular disease and other natural causes, but also in cases of unnatural deaths, these findings point that bereavement was associated with mortality in heart failure patients contributes to and extends the existing literature regarding role of stress in prognosis of heart failure and is consistent with studies reporting associations between bereavement and increased risk of incident cardiovascular conditions ended the authors.

Reference: "Death of a family member may increase heart failure mortality risk" AMERICAN COLLEGE OF CARDIOLOGY; JACC Heart Failure.