Effect of the Great East Japan Earthquake on Cardiovascular Diseases

e examined ambulance records from Miyagi prefecture and reported that the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), including heart failure (HF), acute coronary syndrome (ACS), stroke, and cardiopulmonary arrest, had increased after the Great East Japan Earthquake (magnitude 9.0 on March 11, 2011).1 However, because the ambulance records were made in the emergency rooms by doctors who were not always cardiologists, our findings had to be confirmed by cardiologists in the disaster area. Furthermore, we did not examine the incidence of pulmonary thromboembolism (PTE), infectious endocarditis (IE) or takotsubo cardiomyopathy in that previous study because those diagnoses require a professional approach.1 In this study, we examined the medical records made by cardiologists to determine whether the occurrence of CVDs, including HF, acute myocardial infarction (AMI), PTE, IE and takotsubo cardiomyopathy, had increased after the Earthquake.