• Posted May 15, 2025

Broken Heart Syndrome Remains A Killer, Especially For Men

THURSDAY, May 15, 2025 (HealthDay News) — “Broken heart syndrome” sounds like a romantic, fairy-tale notion — the idea that suffering a devastating loss that can cause one’s heart to wither.

But this syndrome, formally known as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, continues to be associated with a high rate of death and illness, researchers reported May 14 in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Just under 7% of people with broken heart syndrome died between 2016 and 2020, researchers found.

That’s nearly three times higher than the death rate of more than 2% among people without Takotsubo cardiomyopathy,  according to the study.

Broken heart syndrome is especially hard on men, even though the study found that 83% of people who develop the disorder are women.

Men had more than double the rate of deaths from broken heart syndrome, at 11% compared to just over 5% in women, researchers found.

“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,” lead researcher Dr. Mohammad Reza Movahed, an interventional cardiologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center in Tucson, said in a news release.

“The continued high death rate is alarming, suggesting that more research be done for better treatment and finding new therapeutic approaches to this condition,” he added.

Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is thought to be a reaction to a surge of stress hormones caused by an emotionally or physically stressful event, such as the death of a loved one or a divorce.

Part of the heart temporarily enlarges and becomes unable to pump well, increasing the risk of short-term heart failure and heart-related death, researchers said in background notes.

For the new study, researchers used nationwide U.S. hospital records to track diagnoses of Takotsubo cardiomyopathy.

They found that cases increased slightly, from 39,015 in 2016 to 41,290 in 2020.

Common major complications of broken heart syndrome included congestive heart failure (36%); atrial fibrillation (21%); cardiogenic shock (7%); stroke (5%); and cardiac arrest (3%), the study found.

Overall, Takotsubo patients were 12.7 times more likely to suffer cardiogenic shock; 4.8 times more likely to suffer cardiac arrest; 3.5 times more likely to develop heart failure; twice as likely to experience a stroke; and 43% more likely to develop atrial fibrillation, researchers report.

People older than 61 had the highest rates of broken heart syndrome, researchers said. However, there was as much as a threefold higher risk of the syndrome among people 46 to 60 compared to those 31 to 45.

“Takotsubo cardiomyopathy is a serious condition with a substantial risk of death and severe complications,” Movahed said. “These patients should be monitored for serious complications and treated promptly.”

More research is needed to come up with the best ways to treat people suffering from broken heart syndrome, he said.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on broken heart syndrome.

SOURCE: American Heart Association, news release, May 14, 2025