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Page: << Prev | 1 | 2 While an overdose can trigger the condition, "some of the patients received the right dose of the medicine and developed it anyway, so there may be susceptibility in some people," he said. "The issue is why some people get it and some don't."
There are several messages to physicians in the report, Wittstein said. "One is that this is happening after routine procedures, so it is probably happening more than people are picking up now," he said. "So we need to recognize the clinical features of the syndrome, because it is likely more common than people know.
"Another message is that we need to be careful about the dosage of these medications."
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Yet stress cardiomyopathy was seen in some people who got normal doses of the drugs, Wittstein said. "It may even be genetic," he said. "There are people who are vulnerable, and we don't know who they are. It is important to figure out who those people are."
More light is shed by a report in the March 26 issue of the American Journal of Cardiology by physicians at The Miriam Hospital, which is associated with the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, R.I.
A group led by Dr. Richard Regnante, an interventional cardiology fellow, has created a registry of 70 cases of stress cardiomyopathy, the largest to date. Two-thirds of them had experienced a physical or psychological stressful event, such as an auto accident or bad news about a family member. All eventually recovered, although two had a recurrence of the condition.
"This data will help us better understand the disease process and could play a major role in developing and tailoring more effective short- and long-term treatment strategies," Regnante said in a statement.
More information
Questions about stress cardiomyopathy are answered by Johns Hopkins University.
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