Anatol J Cardiol. Ahead of Print: AJC-79227 | DOI: 10.14744/AnatolJCardiol.2024.4207

Changes in Acute Coronary Syndrome Clinic after the Devastating Earthquake in Türkiye

Oğuz Akkuş¹, Ramazan Yadsıbaş¹, Ramazan Furkan Demirkıran¹, Veysel Elitaş¹, Özkan Bekler¹, Fatih Şen¹, Hülya Binokay², Gamze Akkuş³, Ertuğrul Okuyan^4
1Department of Cardiology, Mustafa Kemal University Faculty of Medicine, Antakya, Türkiye
²Department of Biostatistics, Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Adana, Türkiye
³Division of Endocrinology, Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine, Adana, Türkiye
⁴Department of Cardiology, Health Sciences University, Bağcılar Training and Research Hospital, İstanbul, Türkiye

Background: We aimed to investigate the clinical and angiographic characteristics of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) who survived this devastating earthquake and were admitted to our hospital in Antakya/Türkiye.

Methods: We retrospectively examined the impact of the earthquake on the occurrences of acute coronary syndromes in Antakya/Türkiye. All 248 consecutive patients with ACS, also survivors of the earthquake in Antakya, were enrolled as the earthquake group. The earthquake group was created from patients hospitalized between February and June in 2023 after the earthquake. In total, 209 consecutive ACS patients who were hospitalized in our cardiology clinic in similar months of 2022 named as the control group.

Results: Patients admitted before the earthquake were more hospitalized with multivessel disease compared to after the earthquake group (P <.001). Myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary artery disease (MINOCA) was the main reason for the significant increase rate of ACS after the earthquake. The earthquake patient group had lesser diabetes mellitus than the control group (P <.001). The risk of men suffering from ACS after an earthquake is approximately 2.1 times higher than women (P =.023). Those with a history of revascularization are approximately 1.8 times more likely to have ACS after an earthquake (P =.05). The risk of experiencing ACS after an earthquake is approximately 3.5 times higher for those with a family history than for those without (P <.001).

Conclusion: Effects of the devastating earthquake on the heart are the increase in MINOCA patients triggered by great sudden environmental stress and the decrease in diabetes due to worsening nutritional conditions, respectively.

Keywords: Acute coronary syndrome, earthquake, environmental stress, myocardial infarction with non-obstructive coronary artery disease

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