WEDNESDAY, Nov. 10, 2004 (HealthDayNews) -- Moderate alcohol consumption has long been considered good for the heart, but a new study finds binge drinking doubles the risk of dying after a heart attack.
"To our knowledge, no one has looked at binge drinking in this setting before," said study author Dr. Kenneth Mukamal, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Mukamal's team presented its research Wednesday at the American Heart Association's scientific sessions in New Orleans. They studied 1,279 women and 556 men, average age 62, asking them while they were in the hospital after heart attacks about the amount and frequency of alcohol consumption in the year before the attack.
Fourteen percent of them reported binge drinking within the past year.
When researchers looked at the 303 patients who died during the four-year follow-up, they found that binge drinkers had a 73 percent higher death rate after their heart attacks compared to non-binging patients. Survivors who binged during the year before their heart attack were 1.91 times more likely to die of any cause over the next several years than those who drank moderately, Mukamal's team found.
For the study, binge drinking was defined as having three or more alcoholic drinks in one or two hours, Mukamal said. "Today, binge drinking is defined as five drinks on an occasion but [spanning] four or five hours," he said. When they began collecting data for the study in 1989, however, the other binge drinking definition was common, he said.
By whichever definition, Mukamal said, "what we are really talking about are people drinking to the point of intoxication. Five drinks in an evening, you will feel that."
The higher death rate was similar, Mukamal found, among those who binged less than weekly, suggesting that infrequent binging was still problematic.
It didn't seem to matter whether the binge drinking involved beer, wine, liquor or multiple beverages.
In contrast, "if you looked at the people who drank lightly or moderately and do not binge, they have a substantially lower mortality rate," Mukamal said. "It was about 50 percent lower."
Mukamal said light drinking is typically defined for women as up to three drinks a week and moderate drinking as up to one drink a day. For men, light drinking is typically defined as up to one a day and moderate drinking as one to two a day, he said.
The new study will provide cardiologists with some excellent supporting evidence in advising their patients, said Dr. Ravi Dave, a cardiologist at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and an assistant professor of medicine at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. Dave said he and other cardiologists are frequently asked by heart patients if they can drink alcohol and how much.
Dave said he has told heart patients for years to limit their alcohol intake. The new study provides evidence that cautioning heart attack patients not to binge drink is good advice. "Now we can refer to this study and say there is clear evidence [about the dangers of binge drinking]," Dave said.
"Even episodic binge drinking carries risk," added Dr. Sidney Smith, a former president of the American Heart Association and a professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina.
The study is consistent with previous research finding a higher incidence of heart disease in those with an alcohol intake above the moderate level, Smith said.
It makes sense, Mukamal said, that binge drinkers would fare less well than those who drank more moderately. "Drinking that much raises your heart rate and your blood pressure, obviously bad things for people who have had a heart attack," he said.
"We know heavy drinking is associated with heart rhythm disturbances," he said. "And following a binge, blood becomes thicker and is more prone to blood clotting, so that could raise the risk [of death]."
The binge drinkers in the study were more likely to be male, to smoke and to be divorced than were other patients.
"People who drink too much don't seem to care for themselves," Mukamal said.
More information
To learn more about following a heart-healthy lifestyle, visit the American Heart Association.
