**5. Epidemiology**

A retrospective review of studies reporting cases of the Takotsubo syndrome has estimated that these patients account for approximately 2% of all suspected cases of an acute coronary syndrome [17]. The average age of the TTS patient at presentation was around 68 years and the gender bias skewed to a female preponderance for disease, with 90% of the diagnosed population constituting postmenopausal women. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample Database (NIS-USA) reported that 24,701 patients were diagnosed with the Takotsubo syndrome between 2008 and 2009 in the United States, and an extrapolation of this data suggests that there could be as many as 50,000–100,000 cases per annum in the United States alone [11].
