Late-life coronary heart disease mortality of Finnish war veterans in the TAMRISK study, a 28-year follow-up

Health survey data were recorded in 1980 from 667 men, aged 55 years. Of them 102 had been wounded or injured in action during 1939-1945. The remaining participants served as the comparison group. The death certificates during a 28-year follow-up were obtained from the national statistics centre. Statistical comparisons were done by Cox proportional hazard regression model.There were altogether 140 deaths from CHD. In men who had been wounded or injured in action the crude CHD mortality rate per 10,000 population was 2843, while in the comparison group the corresponding figure was 1961. Men who had been wounded or injured in action were 1.7 times (95% CI 1.1-2.5; p = 0.01) more likely to die from CHD than the comparison group.Physical trauma at young adulthood may extend to lifelong effects on health. This study suggests that being physically wounded or injured in war may lead to increased CHD mortality in late adulthood in a Finnish population.There exist a multitude of studies that have investigated the impact of combat exposure on long-term health. A study from the Netherlands has provided evidence for increased late-life mortality among World War II military veterans approximately six decades later. Particularly wounded war survivors and those with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were at risk for death by any cause [1]. Vietnam veterans had statistically significant excesses of deaths from cancer and external causes, including motor vehicle accidents and accidental poisonings, in a 24-year retrospective analysis [2]. Among veterans of the Persian Gulf War, there was a significantly higher mortality rate than among veterans deployed elsewhere, but most of the increase was due to motor vehicle accidents rather than disease [3], an effect which dissipated after seven years of follow-up [4]. The same pattern has been observed also in UK Gulf War veterans [5]. The death rates of Australian Vietnam veterans were higher than those for other veterans for diseases o