Heart attacks aren't as fatal as they used to be

No doubt a decrease of smoking, availability of satins, cpr/defibrillators, and stents has led to a massive increase in prevention and survival.

However, the diagnostic and treatment side has improved considerably in that time too. Troponin assays became widely available in the late 1990s/early 2000s, and dual antiplatelet therapy (aspirin + clopidogrel) around 2000s. These are part of the standard toolkit for detecting and treating MIs that simply didn't exist when I was young and are part of the story of making MIs catastrophic events to a more survivable disease.

The article isn't wrong per se, but I do want to point out that it isn't comprehensive when it comes to listing the reasons. There are interesting advances that it left out.

My father didn't die of a heart attack, he died of an aneurysm. However, he had a massive "widow maker" heart attack and had to be revived from arrest in the ER, more than once.

He had a heart beat, unconscious, for a few days, before the blood thinners caused the aneurysm, I'm told.

So, is this a heart attack? Is this "less deadly?" No, it's a proximal classification. Maybe their cardiac care center has a metric to hit.

The article should really have a picture of a cath lab at the top, not an AED. Advances in catheterization technology are the key factor in reducing heart attack deaths, not AEDs

"[…] people who undergo CPR outside of a hospital setting survive only 10 percent of the time. Within a hospital setting, CPR survival rates are only a bit higher — about 17 percent."

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/contrary-to-popular-...

So it seems CPR has contributed little to the survivability of heart attacks.

CAC tests are not without risk. Every CAC test is a CAT scan which means X-ray radiation.

It is certainly the case that for a great many people the benefits of a CAC test outweigh the risks, but talk to your doctor before you rush out and get one.

I wish it were possible to do a CAC test using MRI (and thus without ionizing radiation) but to the best of my knowledge it's not.

I would just like to recommend this excellent Radiolab episode about saving lives during heart attacks: https://radiolab.org/podcast/how-to-save-a-life

Wish it was the case for some of my family :(

Yeah cancer is the big killer nowadays. Survival rates for stage 4 cancer still poor after many decades of research. Worse yet, in many instances there are no obvious risk factors, such as people in their 30s or 40s who get colon cancer and were not eligible for screening .

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Also as result of long covid, more young healthy people get hearth attack. They have better chance to survive hearth attack, than older people. It improves survival stats!

> A sudden cardiac death is the disease equivalent of homicide or a car crash death. It meant someone’s father or husband, wife or mother, was suddenly ripped away without warning.

Now ever increasing numbers of people avoid an abrupt death and live long enough that misery and terrible quality of life extend for decades. Hooray for all of those who emphasize preventing death above all else, whether they are motivated by extracting medical fees during life's long slow twilight, or by more pure considerations.