Broken heart syndrome - also known as Takotsubo - sees a temporary disruption in the heart's normal pumping function, while the rest of the heart operates normally or with even more forceful contractions.
The syndrome is a temporary heart condition that is often brought on by stressful situations or caused by the heart's reaction to a surge of stress hormones, such as the death of a loved one, or an aggravating situation like being robbed at gun point.
Dr Michael Ward specialises in "broken-heart syndrome". He says people experiencing it may feel sudden chest pain or think they're having a heart attack.
"What happens is the patient has chest pain, they have acute changes on their ECG [electrocardiogram] and they'll come into emergency and they'll look for all intents and purposes like they're having a heart attack involving the front of the heart," the cardiologist said.
WATCH: DR MICHAEL WARD EXPLAIN 'BROKEN-HEART SYNDROME'
Ward said younger women aren't as affected or susceptible to the illness as premenopausal women.
"For example, there's one who got a bad episode when she had to sign her divorce papers. We've had one who had a bad episode when she found out that her husband was cheating on her but it's much more frequently when they have [experienced] the death of their loved one."
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He also tells the story of one of the first cases he recognised with a senior citizen who was grief-stricken with the death her beloved pet.
"An elderly woman who lived alone and had a series of cats and her favourite cat that was sitting on her lap in a thunder storm," he said. "It was a big crack of lightening outside, the cat went and ran to go outside and hit the door flap which was jammed, broke its neck and she was just so distressed by this acute death of her favourite cat that she developed this syndrome."
Ward told Insight this condition can be fatal, but believes it would take extraordinary circumstances to cause death.
"It can kill you but it's very uncommon. The death rate's less than 1 percent in most people's series."
"We haven't had a single death in our series but we've had quite a number of people that have been in intensive care on mechanical circulatory support for a week or so. It can be very serious and until we recognise this with the acute angiograms, everybody just thought these were heart attacks that happened and they described it as being a heart attack."
Ward says most patients will recover wthin weeks, but the greatest mystery of all is that doctors still don't know what causes it.
"It's a syndrome where an acute stressor causes a reversible heart muscle dysfunction from mechanisms that nobody really truly understands. I mean it's only been recognised in Australia for about ten years and it was first recognised in Japan."
"Every year or two someone comes up with a major new theory and everybody investigates it but we still haven't worked it out."
Have you heard of 'broken-heart syndrome'? Do you think you've experienced it before? Leave your comments below.
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