title: Long-term prognostic significance of living alone and other risk factors in patients with acute myocardial infarction.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Living alone has been associated with higher risk of acute coronary syndrome in general population, but there are no consistent findings about its effect on prognosis after acute myocardial infarction (AMI).
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  To analyse the relationships between living alone and other risk factors at baseline and long-term survival after AMI.
  
  
  METHODS
  One hundred and thirty-five patients with confirmed myocardial infarction (MI) admitted to the coronary care unit of the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Clinical Centre of Serbia in Belgrade, between June 2002 and April 2006, were followed up until September 2011. Survival time was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression analysis.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Patients with MI were followed up for a median of 77 months. The mean age of participants was 57.82 years (SD ± 10.8), and one quarter of them were women. According to the multivariate Cox regression analysis stratified on marital status, the model in which were included living alone, age, gender, education, obesity, smoking, hyperlipidaemia, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, previous cardiovascular and other disease, thrombolytic therapy and localisation of MI, the following variables were found to be independent predictors of death after AMI: living alone, with a hazard ratio (HR) of 7.60 [95 % confidence interval (CI) 1.99-29.08], diabetes mellitus (HR 3.31; 95 % CI 1.33-8.23), current smoking (HR 2.82; 95 % CI 1.03-7.71) and, older age (HR 1.13; 95 % CI 1.06-1.19).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The results of this study support hypothesis that patients who live alone have higher long-term all-cause mortality following AMI.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Epidemiology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Belgrade, Visegradska 26a, 11000, Belgrade, Serbia, isidoravujcic@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vujcic
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Vlajinac
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Dubljanin
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Vasiljevic
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Matanovic
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Maksimovic
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sipetic
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Marinkovic
mesh_terms: D000208:Acute Disease; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009203:Myocardial Infarction / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000401:mortality*; D011379:Prognosis; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012307:Risk Factors; D055771:Serbia / Q000453:epidemiology; D015996:Survival Rate; D013997:Time Factors