Previous Cardiovascular Disease, Cardiovascular Risk Factors and Chest Pain in First Myocardial Infarction

Some myocardial infarctions (MI) occur as the first manifestation of atherosclerotic disease. Such MIs are important because of the high likelihood of missed opportunities for prevention. A recent analysis using CALIBER data estimated this proportion at 60%. Further to this research, another level of complexity can be added to improve our understanding of these MIs. This is the concept of a completely 'unanticipated' MI, which can be defined as: MI occurring as the first manifestation of atherosclerotic disease and without any traditional cardiovascular risk factors and without any prior chest pain. Such 'unanticipated' MIs cannot be foreseen by the medical profession and their frequency in the population is unknown. Therefore the aim of this study is to describe the distribution of previously diagnosed cardiovascular disease, cardiovascular risk factors and chest pain in patients with first MI. This will provide an estimate of the number of 'unanticipated' MIs and of the levels of risk factors in unheralded, compared to heralded MI.