The effect of national stress events on the incidence of Takotsubo syndrome

Abstract

We aimed to analyze whether national level stressful events were associated with an increase the incidence of Takotsubo syndrome. Takotsubo syndrome is an acute reversible heart failure, characterized by transient regional wall abnormality in the absence of a culprit coronary disease, usually caused by acute stressful etiologies. The terror attack of October 7th 2023 and the subsequent war had an enormous impact on the society in Israel. This was a multi-center, observational, analytic, retrospective, case-control study. To examine our hypothesis, we compared the incidence of Takotsubo syndrome in 7 medical centers in Israel during the period of October-December 2023 (“during war”) to the period of October-December 2022 (“before war”), both as an absolute number and as a percentage of all admissions in these 7 medical centers. During the period before the war, 20 patients (0.54 % of all admissions to the cardiology departments) were hospitalized with a proven diagnosis of Takotsubo syndrome, compared with 39 patients (1.07 % of all admissions to the cardiology departments) during the war, accounting for a 95 % increase in the absolute number, and 98 % increase in the percentage of all admissions (p = 0.01, OR = 1.98). Most of the demographic and clinical characteristics, laboratory results, ECG, echocardiogram and angiographic findings were similar between the two groups. Our study showed a significant increase in the incidence of Takotsubo syndrome in Israel during the first three months of the war, suggesting the October 7th terror attack and the consequent war was a traumatic event for the society of Israel.