I had always assumed a broken heart was just a metaphor, a cliché of country music and romance novels. So I was as surprised as anyone to learn last week that doctors now consider it a real medical event, one that can kill.
The news comes from a report published in the New England, Journal of Medicine, in which physicians at Johns Hopkins described a group of 18 mostly older women and one man who developed serious heart problems after experiencing a sudden emotional shock, such as the death of a loved one, or, in the case of one 60-year-old woman, a surprise birthday party.
What surprised the doctors who examined these patients was that none of them had actually suffered a heart attack. Indeed, few had any signs of heart disease at all. Yet at least five of the 19--and perhaps more--would have died without treatment, according to Dr. Ilan Wittstein, the cardiologist who led the study.
无我过去常常以为“一颗破碎的心”这种说法不过只是一种隐喻，是乡村音乐和浪漫小说里常常使用的陈词滥调罢了。因此在上周，当我知道医生们现在已经将它视为一种现实存在的具有致命危险的医疗事件的时候，我和所有人一样，都大吃了一惊。
《新英格兰医学杂志》刊登了与之相关的报道。在报道中，约翰•霍普金斯大学的医师们对因经历突然的情感冲击（如挚爱的去世，或如某位60岁女性的例子——一个惊喜生日派对），心脏出现了严重问题的18名女性（其中大部分为老年人）和1名男性的情况进行了描述。
在对这些病患进行检查的时候，令医师们感到大为吃惊的是他们之中没有任何人有过事实上的心脏病发病史。事实上，几乎没有人有心脏疾病的症状。但是，领导这项研究的心脏病专家宜兰•维茨特恩称，这19人中，至少有5人——甚至有可能更多——会没有接受治疗就死亡了。