Cardiologist Erin Michos discusses a study that showed the flu vaccine in people with cardiovascular disease imparted a 28% lower risk of dying and a 13% reduction in major cardiovascular events.
Hi, I'm Dr Aaron Miko's I'm the associate director preventive cardiology at Johns Hopkins. And I'm here to talk about one of the studies were presenting at the American Heart Association meeting led by Dr CVA. Yet Apache, uh, we investigated the efficacy of the influenza vaccine on cardiovascular outcomes among individuals with established cardiovascular disease. And the reason why we did this study is that we know that influence, like other viral infections, uh, can trigger a risk for a heart attack. Others a six fold increased risk of a heart attack in the setting of ah, myocardial infarction, a heart attack. Yet the uptake of the influence of vaccine is very low. There's estimations that despite widespread American Heart Association and CDC guidelines that only about 45% of the US population got an influence of vaccine during the year 18 4019. And during that same year, there was over 35 million Americans that were infected with influenza, with about 500,000 hospitalizations and 34,000 deaths. So it's really important, particularly among the group with cardiovascular disease, because these individuals are at greater risk for from dying in the setting of developing influenza. We undertook a review of the literature Thio. Look at the evaluation influence the vaccine on we found for randomized clinical trials that have been published and 12 prior observational studies. Um, and in this, putting all that data together, we found these were individuals who all had cardiovascular disease, heart attacks or strokes or heart failure history. We found that the use of influenza vaccine was associated with a 28% lower risk of dying during the follow up, which was an average of 20 months, as well as a 13% reduction in major cardiovascular events. This data is really important because we hope that this can increase the uptake of the use of the vaccine, and we already have guidelines in place. We just need better endorsement of both clinicians and patients to follow these guidelines because this is, you know, mortality reduction is really important. We showed that there was a large benefit with the vaccine safe and feasible. And so, you know, given the substantial reduction in mortality, it should be considered alongside other cardiovascular preventive therapies.