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HowToPreventHeartDisease.com |
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Why Heart Failure Patients Have Higher Risk of Fractures? Congestive heart failure (CHF), or simply heart failure, is a condition in which a person’s heart cannot pump enough blood to his or her other organs. This could due to narrowed arteries that supply blood to the heart muscle (coronary artery disease), past heart attack, high blood pressure, heart valve disease, defect or infection of heart valves and/or muscles. 2.2 percent of people in North America and 8.4 percent of people over the age of 75 have heart failure. Meanwhile, some 10 million Americans, including 25 percent of women over the age of 50 develop osteoporosis. Around one-third of people who are affected by ‘hip fracture' (complication of osteoporosis), die a year after getting the fracture. Those who survived usually lose their functions and independence, which requires long-term care. You may wonder how heart failure would be related to higher risk of fractures. Let us take a look of a recent study that was the first to link heart failure patients to a higher risk of fractures. Published on October 21, 2008 in the journal of the American Heart Association, researchers from the University of Alberta in Canada indicated that patients with heart failure are 4 times more likely to sustain a serious fracture than those who have acute cardiovascular conditions.
A total of 2,041 patients with heart failure and more than 14,000 people who had undergone emergency cardiovascular care at facilities in Alberta, Canada between 1998 and 2001 were studied. One year later, it was found that 4.6 percent of the patients with heart failure had suffered a fracture, compared to only 1 percent of the control group. Even after adjusting for medication known to affect bone density like bisphosphonates, the risk of fracture remained proportionally higher for patients with heart failure as compared with the others. Bisphosphonates are frequently given to people with bone-crumbling disease of osteoporosis. Though the researchers still could not figure out the exact causes for such association, they suspect that the patients might not get enough calcium or vitamin D. Other possible reasons identified are calcium excretion caused by raised levels of the hormone aldosterone in heart failure patients, and reduced level of exercise. The parathyroid gland might increase levels of the hormone it produces in an attempt to regulate calcium in the blood. When parathyroid hormone is released into the blood, it could increases the amount of calcium in the blood, which is like removing the mineral from bones. People with heart failure cannot work as well as it should, and they just cannot exert themselves. Bones are highly sensitive to lack of stress, and many chronic heart disease patients are unable to do much exercise that leads to bone mass loss. As such, the researchers urged heart failure patients to go for screening for osteoporosis. In the meantime, they also suggest further research to find out more on the link between heart failure and fractures.
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