Hispanics/ Latinos at higher risk for cardiac dysfunction, heart failure

April 6, 2016

Study Highlights

  • Hispanics/Latinos have higher rates of cardiac dysfunction but are rarely aware they have the heart-pumping problem that can lead to heart failure.
  • Hispanics/Latinos have higher rates of risk factors for cardiac dysfunction, including diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure.
  • Increasing preventive therapies may be the best strategy to keep cardiac dysfunction from turning into heart failure.

DALLAS, April 5, 2016 — Hispanics/Latinos have higher rates of cardiac dysfunction but are rarely aware they have the heart-pumping problem that can lead to heart failure, according to new research in the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation: Heart Failure.

Researchers found that about half of the 1,818 adults in their study of middle-aged and older Hispanics/Latinos had cardiac dysfunction, yet fewer than 1 in 20 participants knew they had a problem.

Cardiac dysfunction is particularly serious because it can develop into heart failure, a chronic disease in which the heart pumps less blood than the body needs to remain healthy.

“The perception has been that Hispanics/Latinos are a low-risk group for cardiac dysfunction, but that is not true,” said Carlos J. Rodriguez, M.D., M.P.H., study senior author and associate professor of medicine and epidemiology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

Read the entire news release from the American Heart Association.

Media Relations

Marguerite Beck: marbeck@wakehealth.edu, 336-716-2415