Potential Role of Hematological Parameters in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction: viewpoint

Abstract

Acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is one of the most important cardiovascular diseases, leading to disability and death worldwide. Atherosclerosis is the main etiology of AMI, which is characterized by a series of highly specific cellular and molecular responses that can best be described, in aggregate, as an inflammatory disease. 1 Risk factors such as arterial hypertension, diabetes mellitus, smoking, dyslipidemia, obesity, emotional stress and family history are not, in themselves, sufficient for in-hospital risk assessment of patients with AMI. Recently, several studies have found an association between oxidative stress, due to inflammation, and hypoxemia processes, with hematological changes and coronary arterial diseases, suggesting their usefulness in identifying the risk of death. These studies have shown the association of hematological parameters with prognostic biomarkers in patients with coronary artery disease. 2-6 This issue of the International Journal of Cardiovascular Sciences includes the paper "Performance of a Hematological Scoring System in Predicting All-Cause Mortality in Patients with Acute Myocardial Infarction", with a proposed scoring system for in-hospital surveillance. Several studies have shown that hypoxemia and infection are the main stimulus to differentiation processes in distinct hematological cell lines in the bone marrow, when hematological diseases, cancer, congestive heart failure, acute and chronic anemias are excluded.