Joe García, who allegedly died of a heart attack after learning that his wife Irma had been one of the teachers shot in the Uvalde, Texas school shooting, may have suffered from what is called Broken Heart Syndrome.
Although at the moment it has not been officially established that Joe has died as a result of the syndrome, his relatives believe that he has. The signs point to an event of this type.
The first to express this hypothesis was Debra Austin in the GoFundMe account created to help the four children of the couple survive .
“I really believe that Joe died of a heart broken, and losing the love of his life for over 25 years was too much to bear,” shared Austin, a cousin of Irma Garcia.
Joe died two days after the shooting in which Irma was riddled in the massacre at Robb Elementary School.
Relative organized a GoFundMe fundraiser to raise money to collect money for the couple’s four children.
So far, the initiative exceeds $2.5 million dollars in collections.
“This disease is a myopathy of the heart, that is, inflammation, which is caused when a person has a very severe emotional event”, stated Dr. Edgar Ch Once in an interview with Telemundo.
Increase in cases of Broken Heart Syndrome
A report from the American Heart Association of the 2021 detected a increase in cases of this type between 2006 to 2006, with 135,460 people suffering events of this nature.
In such incidents, the main pumping chamber of the heart becomes enlarged and does not distribute blood properly to other parts of the body.
As a result, patients experience chest pain, shortness of breath and other heart attack-like symptoms.
“The heart muscle suddenly weakens in a severe stress scenario,” said Dr. Ilan Wittstein, cardiologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, co-author of a study in the 2005 about this syndrome rome.
Stress can be emotional; the death of a loved one or being the victim of a crime are some examples. But it can also be physical as a result of a severe infection or a pneumonia event.
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