Flood victims in hurricane-ravaged Vermont are at a huge increased risk for heart attacks and strokes in the wake of the disaster, says a top cardiac surgeon.
However, there are precautions the flood victims can take to safeguard their health, renowned cardiac specialist Dr. Chauncey Crandall told Newsmax Health.
“The bottom line in natural disaster is that it brings huge stress, and it’s well documented that the level of heart attack and stroke is very high. Studies have looked at it, but I’ve also seen it myself,” said Dr. Crandall, author of Newsmax’s Heart Health Report newsletter.
Flood victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans had a three-fold increase in heart attacks in the two years after the 2005 disaster, a Tulane University study found.
“When I worked in Florida after Hurricane Katrina, we had to hire extra staff because our emergency room was loaded with people undergoing extreme stress after the hurricane. They had lost their homes, and they were coming in by the boatload with heart attacks,” added Dr. Crandall, chief of the cardiac transplant program at the Palm Beach Cardiovascular Clinic in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
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