Declines in Acute Myocardial Infarction After Smoke-Free Laws and Individual Risk Attributable to Secondhand Smoke

Abstract

Background— The estimated effects of recent pubic and workplace smoking restriction laws suggest that they produce significant declines in community rates of heart attack. The consistency of these declines with existing estimates of the relative risk of heart attack in individuals attributable to passive smoking exposure is poorly understood. The objective is to determine the consistency of estimates of reductions in community rates of heart attacks resulting from smoking restriction laws with estimates of the relative risk of heart disease in individuals exposed to passive smoking. Methods and Results— Meta-analyses of existing estimates of declines in community rates were compared with a mathematical model of the relationship between individual risk and community rates. The outcome measure is the ratio of community rates of acute myocardial infarction (after divided by before implementation of a smoking restriction law). There is a significant drop in the rate of acute myocardial infarction hospital adm...