# What percentage of people survive a heart attack, I am having trouble finding info
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [August 20, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338 "2025-08-20T20:15:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/1 "2025-08-20T20:15:53Z")
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.
So is there any way to actually know?
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### Author:  [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2025, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/2 "2025-08-20T22:36:07Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@sunstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunstone)
#### Post date: [August 20, 2025, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/3 "2025-08-20T22:45:42Z")
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.
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### Author:  [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 12:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/4 "2025-08-21T00:24:05Z")
Every time they’ve taken a poll of people that have had heart attacks, over 99 percent of them say they survived the experience.
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### Author:  [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/5 "2025-08-21T00:27:11Z")
But the 100 year survival rate is really low.
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### Author:  [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/6 "2025-08-21T00:36:41Z")
Since no one knows I’m just going to put ‘42’ as the answer on this online application to become a fishishin.
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### Author:  [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/7 "2025-08-21T01:23:08Z")
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](https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/21630-silent-heart-attack) 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](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957218308505#bib0025) “a pooled [survival rate](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/nursing-and-health-professions/survival-rate "Learn more about survival rate from ScienceDirect's AI-generated Topic Pages") at discharge of 15.0% (95%CI, 12.0–18.0%) with little change over time”
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### Author:  [@Reeses\_Monkey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeses_Monkey)
#### Post date: [August 21, 2025, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-percentage-of-people-survive-a-heart-attack-i-am-having-trouble-finding-info/1022338/8 "2025-08-21T01:37:33Z")
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.