Pregnancy May Increase Heart Attack Risk
Heart attacks in young women are rare, but research shows pregnancy may increase that risk three to four-fold. Now researchers are updating how to spot and treat heart problems in young moms. Researchers studied reports from the last ten years of 103 women who had a heart attack while pregnant, and compared them to older reports. They found fewer women are dying from heart attacks during pregnancy -- which experts say is a sign more doctors are aware of the risk. One out of four women had a separation of the walls of heart arteries, another 13 percent had normal arteries. Most patients also had normal risk factors for heart disease -- like family history and smoking -- leading researchers to urge doctors to identify and treat these conditions early. The older a pregnant woman was, the more likely she was to have a heart attack. Researchers say this is concerning because women are waiting longer to have children.
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