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SATURDAY, March 13 (HealthDay News) -- Police who responded on 9/11 to the collapsing World Trade Center towers appear to be at greater risk for heart problems compared with people in the general population, a new study finds.
The report was to be presented Saturday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting, in Atlanta.
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"This is the first study to suggest a potential link between exposure to Ground Zero and early preclinical heart abnormalities," lead researcher Dr. Lori Croft, an assistant professor of medicine at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, said in an ACC news release.
"Inhaled particulate matter has been shown to cause lung and heart disease. Exposure to the dust from the collapsed buildings may play a role in these cardiac abnormalities," she said.
For the study, Croft's team looked at the heart function of almost 1,200 police officers who were observed at Mount Sinai Medical Center as part of a program to assess cardiovascular health after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. The officers underwent ultrasound screening from January 2008 through June 2009.
The research team looked in particular at a condition called diastolic dysfunction. This occurs when the lower chambers of the heart -- the ventricles -- become stiff and cannot fully relax during the pumping stage called diastole, when the ventricles fill with blood. The result is that blood can back up into the lungs, reducing lung capacity.
Croft's group found that more than 60 percent of the officers had less-than-normal diastolic heart function. When the researchers looked only at those under 50 years of age, 47 percent still had diastolic dysfunction. These percentages are much higher than what's found in the general population, where about 7 percent suffer from diastolic dysfunction.
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