Coronary Heart Disease Risk Factors and Mortality

This study challenges conventional wisdom that patients with more coronary heart disease (CHD) risk factors have worse outcomes following their first MI. We found that patients with multiple CHD risk factors presented much earlier in life with MI and had lower hospital mortality than patients with fewer or no risk factors. We confirmed that the high prevalence of risk factor exposure in patients with MI was consistent with the prior literature. In summary, we report an unexpected and possibly controversial association that, like all observational findings, should be considered hypothesis-generating and further explored in terms of health care provided to patients who reach the hospital alive with first MI.