Interesting Fact # 1132 - Health

A broken heart can kill you.

(Broken heart syndrome, known medically as Takotsubo cardiomyopathy, is serious, patients present with symptoms such as heart-induced shock and abnormal heart rhythms which often require emergency treatment.

It was first described by Japanese researchers in the early 1990s, but the good news is that it can be cured. Patients studied by researchers from two hospitals in Providence, Rhode Island were diagnosed with broken heart syndrome between July 2004 and April 2008, and even though a fifth were were critically ill and required emergency treatment to keep them alive, they all survived the first 48 hours and experienced a full recovery.)

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