Heart Disease is All in the Family

Heart Disease is All in the Family

(September 11, 2007) Do you have a close family member with heart disease? Then you might be at a higher risk yourself.

In Britain, researchers came to the conclusion after reviewing previous studies on heart disease and how it runs in families. One study revealed 48 percent of all heart disease events and 72 percent of all premature deaths from heart disease occurred in 14 percent of families with a history of heart disease.

According to study authors, these findings could help in developing better preventive services to people with a family history of the condition and could markedly improve treatment and survival for heart conditions.

The authors recommend screening “first-degree” relatives of people with heart disease — mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters — but such screening rarely takes place in clinical practice. In one study conducted at Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, Md., among 859 siblings of 490 heart disease patients, siblings actually had a lower awareness of high blood pressure — a key risk factor for heart disease — and how to treat it than members of the general population. In another U.S. study involving more than 5,000 heart disease patients, less than 1 percent had discharge plans calling for family members to be screened, and only 20 percent had family members screened within six months of the patient’s initial hospital stay.

“First degree relatives are an obvious, but neglected, group at which primary prevention should be targeted,” conclude the study authors.

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