Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Causes
By Mayo Clinic staffIt's thought that a brief surge of stress hormones, such as adrenaline, might temporarily damage the hearts of some people. How these hormones might hurt the heart or whether something else is responsible isn't clear.
Broken heart syndrome is often preceded by an intense physical or emotional event. Some of the triggers of broken heart syndrome have included news of an unexpected death of a loved one, a frightening medical diagnosis, domestic abuse or losing a lot of money. Physical stressors, such as an asthma attack, a car accident or major surgery, also have been known to trigger broken heart syndrome.
How is broken heart syndrome different from a heart attack?
Most heart attacks are caused by a complete blockage of a heart artery due to a blood clot forming at the site of narrowing from fatty buildup (atherosclerosis). In broken heart syndrome, the heart arteries are not blocked, although blood flow in the arteries of the heart may be reduced.
- Reeder GS. Stress-induced (takotsubo) cardiomyopathy. http://www.uptodate.com/index. Accessed Jan. 12, 2009.
- Wittstein IS, et al. Neurohumoral features of myocardial stunning due to sudden emotional stress. New England Journal of Medicine. 2005;352:539.
- Wittstein IS. The broken heart syndrome. Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine. 2007;7:S17.
- Gianni M, et al. Apical ballooning syndrome or takotsubo cardiomyopathy: A systematic review. European Heart Journal. 2006;27:1523.
- Merli E, et al. Tako-Tsubo cardiomyopathy: New insights into the possible underlying pathophysiology. European Journal of Echocardiography. 2006;7:53.
- Prasad A (expert opinion). Mayo Clinic. Rochester, Minn. Jan. 19, 2009.
