News

 Chest pain is the classical symptom that usually directs diagnostic evaluation for heart attack. But as many as 35% of patients do not report chest pain.

A new study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine has found that women with the heart condition known as acute coronary syndrome are less likely to have chest pain than men, which could raise their risk of misdiagnosis.
Acute coronary syndrome, which includes unstable angina and heart attack, is an umbrella term for conditions where blood supply to the heart muscle is suddenly blocked, according to the American Heart Association.
Women are more likely to be misdiagnosed in the emergency departments and have a higher risk of death compared to patients who report chest pain. Thus they recommended health care providers should maintain a high degree of suspicion for heart attack in young patients, particularly women, given that one in five women with diagnosed do not report with chest pain. However, they could not identify the reasons for the sex differences in acute coronary syndrome symptoms.
For both sexes, the most common symptoms besides chest pain were weakness, feeling hot, shortness of breath, cold sweat and pain in the left arm or shoulder. Among patients without chest pain, women had more of these other symptoms than men.

Source - The Daily Star