In the overall cohort, the median survival was 4.8 years, including 8.2 years for those aged 65 to 74 and 3.1 years for people over 75. Eight-year mortality rates were 65 percent overall, 49 percent for those undergoing PCI and 46 percent for CABG patients.

Kochar et al. hope these findings can help educate patients about their expected long-term prognoses. Long-term outcomes of older heart attack patients are understudied, the authors added, because they’re often excluded from clinical trials and many other trials don’t have follow-up beyond the first few years after the index event.

“The mortality of patients treated in routine community practice is likely worse than those of patients typically included in randomized trial populations, regardless of revascularization status,” the authors wrote. “Armed with these data, patients and clinicians can have more meaningful conversations about post‐MI prognosis and more optimally engage in shared decision making, especially as observed survival in post‐MI patients was markedly lower than actuarial survival among similarly aged U.S. adults.”

Indeed, data from the United States National Vital Statistics Reports shows the median life expectancy of non-MI individuals aged 65-69 is 18.7 years, while it’s just 8.3 years for those who have suffered a heart attack. At every age range above that, the life expectancy of people who haven’t had a heart attack is at least twice that of heart attack survivors—although the absolute difference in years decreases with older age as life expectancies in both groups shrink.