The Great East Japan Earthquake: What We Learned in the past 5 Years and Future Perspectives

  On March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan earthquake hit a large area of east Japan. This catastrophic disaster due to subduction zone earthquake around Japan trench and its accompanying tsunami caused enormous damages on the Pacific coast of north eastern Japan. Additionally, nuclear leakage from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant devastated and resulted in a lot of evacuees, especially in the Fukushima prefecture. In the wake of a huge disaster, it was demonstrated that the incidence of cardiovascular diseases increased. As reported in the Northridge earthquake and the Great Hanshin-Awaji earthquake, recent studies have revealed that transient increases of cardiovascular diseases such as sudden cardiac death, acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and stroke are observed after the Great East Japan earthquake. On the other hand, it should be noted that changes in lifestyle, living environment, physical and mental stresses due to long-term evacuation worsen lifestyle-related diseases and cardiovascular diseases. In this session, we will discuss about recent advancement in knowledge learned from the Great East Japan earthquake and propose forward planning to prevent cardiovascular diseases in future disasters.