Who risks the most with the heart? They are the longtime bachelors. In the presence of a diagnosis of heart failure, in fact, men who have never married are more than double the probability of dying within about 5 years since the discovery of the disease. This compared to women in general, of any marital status, ‘married’ or unmarried, and compared to men who had been previously married. The gap was observed by the authors of a study presented at the Annual Scientific Session of the American College of Cardiology with the World Congress of Cardiology.
The worst prognosis is therefore of the ‘lonely hearts’. It is not a matter of insignificant data from a medical point of view, of ‘gossip’. “There is a relationship between a person’s relationship status and their clinical prognosis” with heart failure, “and it’s important to understand why this is so,” says Katarina Leyba, a physician at the University of Colorado and lead author of the study. For scholars, awareness of marital status could help doctors improve care for patients with the disease. “As our population is aging and living longer, it is imperative to determine how best to support the aging population, and it may not be as easy as popping a pill. We need to take a personalized and holistic approach to support patients, particularly with a chronic disease process such as heart failure.”
The study offers new evidence that a person’s gender and marital status can influence the risk and prognosis of heart disease. Heart failure, when the heart becomes too weak or stiff to effectively pump blood around the body, is a leading cause of cardiovascular disease and death.
The scientists drew on data from the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis, a prospective study of 6,800 American adults aged 45 to 84. For the 94 participants with heart failure (at year 10 of the study), the researchers compared survival rates from the time of diagnosis by sex and marital status over an average follow-up period of 4.7 years.
To separate the role of marital status from other known risk factors, the researchers made the necessary adjustments. And according to the findings, men who had never been married were, as explained, more than twice as likely to die within about 5 years of being diagnosed, as women of any marital status. Lifelong bachelors were also about 2.2 times more likely to die than married men, but men who were widowed, divorced, or separated were not at a higher risk of dying than married men.
Among women, however, marital status was not a significant predictor of death. The reasons behind the relationship between a man’s marital status and post heart failure survival deserve further study, the researchers said. Potential drivers could be, they speculate, social interaction or isolation, which can play an important role in mood and overall health; or access to caregiver support for help with home health monitoring, medication adherence, and transportation to medical appointments; finally differences in health behaviors such as diet, exercise and alcohol intake. “As physicians, we need to think about our patients not only in terms of medical risk factors, but also the context of their lives,” concludes Leyba.