Aug 29, 2019
Vidcast: https://youtu.be/ippJoLK0hZU
I learned in med school and then read over and over again that women have different and more subtle heart attack symptoms compared with men. Cardiologists often warn not to expect the crushing left-sided chest and arm pains if you want to make a clinical diagnosis in women.
A Scottish study, just published in the Journal of the American Heart Association, now labels this medical orthodoxy a medical myth. Researchers at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary studied the presenting symptoms of 274 heart attack victims diagnosed by the gold standard cardiac muscle protein troponin test. Ninety-three percent of both men and women had chest pain and 48-49 percent of each gender had pain radiating to the left. Women did have more pain traveling to the jaw and back as well as nausea, but men also had the gastrointestinal symptom heartburn and also reported back pain.
The assumption that women only have atypical heart attack symptoms has led to delayed diagnoses and over 8,000 avoidable deaths during the last decade in the UK and Wales. The same is likely true for the US.
Knowing this latest finding should drive us to demand an EKG and a troponin test for any woman with chest, arm, jaw, or back pain. Doing so could be lifesaving.
Amy V. Ferry, Atul Anand, Fiona E. Strachan, Leanne Mooney, Stacey D. Stewart, Lucy Marshall, Andrew R. Chapman, Kuan Ken Lee, Simon Jones, Katherine Orme, Anoop S. V. Shah, Nicholas L. Mills. Presenting Symptoms in Men and Women Diagnosed With Myocardial Infarction Using Sex‐Specific Criteria. Journal of the American Heart Association, 2019; 8 (17) DOI: 10.1161/JAHA.119.012307
#Heartattack #women #underdiagnosis