Study: Heart Disease Affects Work Productivity and Income

Heart disease remains the leading cause of death in the United States. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about one in four of all deaths involve heart disease. But while heart disease can certainly take a toll on your health, it can affect other aspects of your life, including your job. A new study has found that people who experience a heart attack, stroke or other heart disease-related event work fewer hours and earn less income than their counterparts who haven't experienced a heart event.

About the Study

Published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ), the study sought to investigate the way in which heart disease -- specifically heart events like stroke and heart attack -- affect people's ability to work. After analyzing data from the Canadian Hospitalization and Taxation Database, researchers found that individuals who had experienced a heart event in the past three years earned an average of 5% to 20% less than their healthy counterparts who hadn't experienced a heart event during this time. Furthermore, individuals who had experienced a heart event in the past three years were up to 31% less likely to work at all than their counterparts.

"Three years after admission to hospital for any of these health events, people who survived were less likely than the matched participants to be working and had greater losses in annual earnings," explained Dr. Allan Garland, Professor of Medicine and Community Health Sciences.

Researchers went on to say that stroke affected individuals' ability to work the moist, followed by cardiac arrest and then acute myocardial infarction.

How Heart Disease Affects Work Performance

Heart disease can affect a person's ability work in several ways. When an individual experiences stroke, heart attack or any other heart event, he or she will likely need immediately professional medical attention. This means taking a trip to the nearest hospital emergency room. If the heart event occurs while the individual is working, he or she will have to leave their workplace to seek this treatment. Even if it occurs while the individual is off work, he or she may still spend several days in the hospital so that doctors can monitors their heart vitals. This prevents the individual from working, thereby lowering his or her income.

Another way in which heart disease affects work performance involves medication. There are dozens of drugs that can reduce the risk of subsequent heart events. However, many of them carry the risk of unwanted side effects, including drowsiness, that can affect a person's ability to work.