About 47 percent of on-duty firefighter deaths are heart-related, according to the U.S. Fire Administration (USFA).
Stress and overexertion is the root cause of 98 percent of these fatalities. Heart rates can spike when an alarm goes off and firefighters wear up to 50 pounds of equipment while performing physical laborious tasks.
"It's 100 percent exertion level. You have to be prepared to do that for 15 to 20 minutes at a time," Chris Richmond, fire marshal for the City of Springfield, Illinois, told the local Fox News station.
“When there’s such a get up and go response, in addition to the heart rate and blood pressure going up, it actually also increases their risk of platelet activation and platelet aggregation, meaning increased risk of clot formation anywhere in the body," said Shachin Goel, MD, with Prairie Cardiovascular Consultants.
Richmond said physical fitness and training for firefighter-specific activities are crucial to maintaining heart health.
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Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.