Warm winter is associated with low incidence of ST elevation myocardial infarctions and less frequent acute coronary angiographies in an alpine country

Background Weather conditions influence symptoms in chronic stable coronary artery disease (CAD). Whether the ongoing climate change, with continuous and rapid temperature increases, also has an impact on the incidence and outcome of non-ST elevation (NSTEMI) and ST elevation (STEMI) myocardial infarctions referred for acute coronary angiography (CA) is less clear. Methods According to weather data from the Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics, Innsbruck University, the 2005/2006 winter was very cold (CW) and the 2006/2007 winter extraordinarily warm (WW). As the overall invasive management of patients with acute coronary syndromes did not change substantially within these winters, we compared patients referred for acute CA suffering an acute STEMI or NSTEMI, their risk factors and in-hospital mortality rates between these two consecutive winters. Results As expected, the average temperature was lower (− 1.6 vs. + 5.9°C; p