Men Are Twice as Likely as Women to Die Due to ‘Broken Heart Syndrome’: New Study

Men are twice as likely to die from broken heart syndrome than women, according to a new study.

The latest study published in the Journal of the American Heart Association (JAHA) on Wednesday, May 14, found that the mortality rate of men who get “broken heart syndrome” — which scientists call takotsubo cardiomyopathy — is 11.2% compared to 5.5% of women.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a condition that occurs when the pumping function of a person’s heart weakens due to emotional or physical stress or extreme emotions — like when they go through a divorce or the death of a loved one, according to the Mayo Clinic. 

People with this syndrome experience similar symptoms as that of a heart attack, including chest pain and shortness of breath, per the Mayo Clinic. While the causes of the condition are unclear, scientists believe that it may be brought on by a “surge of stress hormones, such as adrenaline” which results in the “temporary squeezing of the large or small arteries of the heart.” 

As a result of these symptoms, people may end up dying. According to the JAHA study, 6.6% people with broken heart syndrome died of cardiogenic shock, which happens when the heart can’t pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs, per Mayo Clinic.

About 35.9% of people with the condition died of congestive heart failure, 20.7% died from atrial fibrillation, 5.3% died from a stroke and 3.4% died of cardiac arrest, per the study. 

“It seems to be a consistent finding that men don’t get takotsubo syndrome as much, but when they do, they do worse,” Dr. Harmony Reynolds, director of the Sarah Ross Soter Center for Women’s Cardiovascular Research at NYU Langone Health, told NBC News.

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The latest study, which analyzed data from nearly 200,000 people over the age of 18 in the U.S. who were hospitalized with takotsubo cardiomyopathy from 2016 to 2020, also found that while men were more likely to die by broken heart syndrome, it affected more women.

A majority of the patients that were hospitalized with the condition — about 83% — were women, and of the women found with the condition, about 6.5% had a high mortality rate with “no significant improvement over the years studied.” 

Dr. Mohammad Movahed, a cardiologist at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center, who led the study, previously noted in a Pew Research study that the reason why men could be more susceptible to death after getting broken heart syndrome is because they “seem to turn to their networks less often” for “social connection” and “emotional support.”

“If you have this stressful trigger, and the stress is not gone, that’s probably going to continue to harm the heart, or at least reduce the chance of recovery,” he told NBC News. 

Dr. Ilan Wittstein, a cardiologist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, added: “Men may be more at risk for dying and having bad outcomes because they’re less susceptible to begin with. So it takes a more dangerous trigger to precipitate the syndrome.”