VIDEO – SIRENS ARE REAL –
May 15, 2025 – A large-scale U.S. study reveals that Takotsubo cardiomyopathy—also known as broken heart syndrome—continues to carry a high risk of death and severe complications, with no improvement in outcomes from 2016 to 2020. Often triggered by extreme emotional or physical stress, the condition mimics a heart attack and primarily affects older women, though men experience more than double the mortality rate.
It can lead to severe, short-term failure of the heart muscle and can be fatal. Takotsubo cardiomyopathy may be misdiagnosed as a heart attack because the symptoms and test results are similar.
This study is one of the largest to assess in-hospital death rates and complications of the condition, as well as differences by sex, age and race over five years.
“We were surprised to find that the death rate from Takotsubo cardiomyopathy was relatively high without significant changes over the five-year study, and the rate of in-hospital complications also was elevated,” said study author M. Reza Movahed, M.D., Ph.D., an interventional cardiologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center in Tucson, Arizona.
“The continued high death rate is alarming, suggesting that more research be done for better treatment and finding new therapeutic approaches to this condition.”
