Shovelling snow linked to heart attacks
15 Dec 2011 by Evoluted New Media
It’s not just an urban myth – shovelling snow can cause heart attacks say American researchers.
Anecdotal evidence in America suggests that shovelling snow can cause heart attacks, with two of the most important cardiology associations including snow-shovelling as a high risk physical activity on their websites.
Researchers from Queen’s School of Medicine wanted to test this theory so retrospectively reviewed patient records at Kingston General Hospital (KGH) from the two previous winter seasons. They discovered that of the 500 patients entering the hospital, 7% (35 patients) started experiencing symptoms while shovelling snow.
“This is a huge number,” said Dr Adrian Baranchuk, a professor at the school of medicine and cardiologist at KGH. “7% of anything in medicine is a significant proportion.”
“If we take into account that we may have missed some patients who did not mention they were shovelling snow around the time that the episode occurred, that number could easily double,” he added.
Three factors were identified by the researchers as putting individuals at a high risk of a snow-shovelling related heart attack: gender, genetics and smoking. Of the 35 patients, 31 were male, while 20 had a family history of premature coronary artery disease, and 16 smoked.
The second two factors – family history and smoking – may carry much more weight than the first, but the researchers could not correct for the high rate of snow-shovelling among men in the sample.
A history of regularly taking four or more cardiac medications was found to be preventative, but men with a family history of premature cardiovascular disease should be careful when snow-shovelling.
The findings have been published in Clinical Research in Cardiology.
