Heart attacks hitting younger

Hospitals are treating a rapidly rising number of people in their 20s and 30s for heart attacks.

Since 1989, the number of heart attack victims treated in New Zealand hospitals has more than doubled, with the biggest rise among those aged between 25 and 34.

Better treatment and prevention means heart disease is less likely to kill, but it remains a leading cause of death in the Western world.

It accounts for nearly one-third of all deaths in New Zealand, and more than 30 patients every day are discharged from its hospitals after treatment for a heart attack.

National Heart Foundation medical director Norman Sharpe said death rates from heart disease (adjusted for the ageing population) had been falling for 30 years.

But evidence was emerging that those born since the 1950s "may be dying at a faster rate", he said.

The explosion in obesity and diabetes was one possible explanation.

"If obesity is driving it, this analysis provides the first evidence for it. We need to swing into action."

Ultimately, it could mean that today's children would have a shorter life expectancy than their parents, Dr Sharpe said.

Christchurch cardiologist John Elliott, who has analysed the growing number of heart-attack patients treated in hospitals between 1989 and 2002, said cholesterol, blood pressure and smoking rates had not changed significantly in that time.

"The major change has been in obesity."

He said a United States post-mortem study of people killed on the roads found higher rates of emerging heart disease in teenagers and people in their 20s who had smoked, were overweight or had diabetes.

"The increase is real and is probably largely due to increasing prevalence of overweightness and obesity," said Dr Elliott. "More and more people's lives are being warped at an early age by heart attacks and that has important implications for jobs and family life and for insurance."

Internationally, some of the rise in the number of heart attacks among young people was attributed to illegal drug abuse, particularly cocaine, but Dr Elliott did not believe it was a significant factor in New Zealand.

Writing in the New Zealand Medical Journal, he said nearly 5800 patients were discharged with a heart attack in 1989. By 2002-03, this figure had leapt to 11,600.

He said the rise was partly due to changes in coding for the condition and the now widespread use of a sensitive blood test that picked up heart attacks previously diagnosed as unstable angina. But the trends emerged before these changes.

An ageing population contributed to the rise but could not explain the increases seen in all age groups and in both men and women.

"The largest percentage change [150 per cent] was in the youngest age group of men aged 25 to 34 years," he said.

Heart attacks among the under 50s rose 13 per cent from 480 to 1120.

Although women remained less likely to suffer a heart attack than men, their rates had increased more rapidly - 119 per cent compared with men's 102 per cent.

Dr Elliott called for hospital funding to keep pace with the heart disease epidemic and new methods of treatment until measures to reduce obesity, boost exercise levels and to cut smoking rates succeeded.

Robin Toomath of Fight the Obesity Epidemic has repeatedly said obesity among young people could sweep away the progress made in reducing heart disease. "I see it as a tidal wave sneaking up from behind."

- NZPA