A quick google search turns up results like ‘90% of people survive a heart attack’.
But then I read that that is only for the people who get to the hospital. Among people who never go to the hospital, or never make it to the hospital, a lot die. So the actual number may be closer to 50% of people survive a heart attack, not 90%, because a lot of people never make it to the hospital.
Then you have things like the 1 months, 1 year, 2 year and 5 year survival rates. So even if someone is in the 90% of people in a hospital who survive, the survival rates at 1 month, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, etc are lower. Maybe someone survived a heart attack, only to die 2 months later. I wouldn’t call that ‘surviving’.
Then you have all the people who do things like get an EKG and find that they’ve had a heart attack in the past and never knew it. So those people obviously survived a heart attack and never even knew they had one.
I don’t know the answer, but I was actually in a hospital when I had a heart attack. I had an appointment with my doctor on account of increasing angina and his office was in a clinic attached to the hospital. He had me admitted immediately and I spent two weeks in the hospital. It gave me a two week head start on quitting smoking. That happened in 1965. I’d be interested in knowing what the 60 year survival stats are.
Realizing that one incident is not the sort of answer asked for, I will go ahead and reveal that I had a severe hart attack on Feb 4th, 2004. Two stents were place within hours, and I’ve been fine ever since. The cause of the event was a coronary artery blockage. I have a cardio evaluation every year, and the cardiologist said “You have a strong heart” at the last exam. I’m currently 82 years old, so pretty happy about that.
To muddy it up even more - there is a huge difference between a cardiac arrest (during which the heart stops beating) and a myocardial infarction (during which blood supply is inadequate for demand and heart muscle tissue dies). Not all myocardial infarctions cause arrest.
My understanding is that few, less than 10%, survive a cardiac arrest at home. But what is even the n of home myocardial infarctions? How many are silent? (According to this Cleveland Clinic cite 22 to 60% are but I’m guessing that’s with a selection bias to survived ones? And more commonly silent MI in women and among diabetics.) How many are dismissed as heartburn or a sore muscle and don’t get identified as heart attacks?
Out of hospital cardiac arrest gets reported as under 10% survival. In hospital is reportedly “a pooled survival rate at discharge of 15.0% (95%CI, 12.0–18.0%) with little change over time”
My husband suffered a cardiac arrest in 2013. He was at work, which happens to be at a University with a Nursing program. His event happened right in front of their classroom building. The students came out and administered CPR until the ambulance arrived.
When I got to the hospital the cardiologist told me that survival rate of a cardiac arrest occurring outside of a hospital is 3%. Yes, three percent. My husband was put in a medical coma and had a battery of tests run on him. He was touch and go for a while but came out of the coma just fine. He was released after 10 days and was back to work three days later.
He had an ICD (internal pacemaker & defibrillator) implanted about a month after that and thanks to some recurring atrial fibrillation he had a heart ablation in 2015. We’ll be celebrating his 60th birthday in November.