The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) exposed hundreds of thousands of people to intense dust and traumatic experiences, which led to acute respiratory illnesses and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the years immediately after the event. Since severe stress is often associated with subsequent heart disease, Dr. Steven Stellman, professor of clinical epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and research director of the World Trade Center Health Registry, and colleagues compared the Registry roster to the New York State hospitalization database to determine if its enrollees had been hospitalized for heart-related conditions. They found an increased heart disease risk among registrants with 9/11 related PTSD, mainly among persons who performed rescue/recovery work in response to the disaster. Findings from the paper, “Cardiovascular Disease Hospitalizations in Relation to Exposure to the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center Disaster and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder”, are published in the Journal of the American Heart Association.