A new study in the March 3 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology concludes there may be connection between how the way heart handles anger and heart disease and deaths from cardiac arrest.

 

Previous studies have shown that there is an increased incidence of sudden cardiac death during times of population stress such as earthquake and war. This study however provides the first evidence that changes caused by anger and other strong emotions can predict arrhythmias and may link mental stress to sudden cardiac arrest.

 

“It’s an important study because we are beginning to understand how anger and other types of mental stress can trigger potentially lethal ventricular arrhythmias, especially among patients with structural heart abnormalities,” Rachel Lampert, associate professor of cardiology and electrophysiology of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, who headed the study, said.

 

For the study, Lampert and colleagues studied 62 patients with heart disease and implanted heart defibrillators or ICDs. These devices can detect dangerous rhythms or arrhythmias and deliver an electrical shock to restore a normal heart beat.

 

The patients were asked to recall a recent event which had made them very angry. Meanwhile, the researchers were doing a test called T-Wave Alternans, which measures electrical instability in the heart.

 

Then the patients were followed for three years to see how many of them suffered cardiac arrest and needed a shock from their defibrillators.

 

The study found that patients with the highest anger-induced electrical instability were 10 times more likely than everyone else to have an arrhythmia in follow up.

 

“We found in the lab setting that yes, anger did increase this electrical instability in these patients,” Lampert said.

 

However, she cautioned that “how anger and stress may impact people whose hearts are normal is likely very different from how it may impact the heart which has structural abnormalities.”

 

She is now conducting another study to see if anger management classes can help decrease the risk of arrhythmia in people at risk of sudden cardiac arrest.