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A Woman Can Have Heart Attack Even Without Having Chest Pain!
 

While chest pain and discomfort have been considered as an important symptom for heart attack patients, it might not be applied to certain group of people especially for younger and middle-aged women.

Researchers from the Watson Clinic in Lakeland, Florida reported in the ‘Journal of the American Medical Association’ on February 22, 2012 that women, especially younger women, are more likely than men to be admitted at the hospital with no chest pain or discomfort after getting a heart attack, and they are also more likely to die than men of the same age. These women might not even know that they are having a heart attack. The lack of symptoms could indeed delay medical care and can result in differences in treatment.

The findings were still preliminary, according to researchers. But they also pointed out that if the results were true, they would suggest that women less than 55 years old are also at higher risk for atypical presentation, which can include symptoms such as unexplained shortness of breath, or pain in areas including the jaw, neck, arms, back and stomach.

After analyzing medical records in a national database of heart attack patients from 1994 to 2006, including about 1.1 million people treated at some 2,000 hospitals, they found that 31 percent of male patients and 42 percent of female patients did not have any chest pain or discomfort.

The likelihood of this kind of atypical presentation differed noticeably between younger women and younger men. Women having a first heart attack tend to be 7 years older on average than men. Meanwhile, women under the age of 45 were 30 percent more likely than men in their age group to present without chest pain. The likelihood dropped to 25 percent for age group between 45 and 65, and the difference just disappeared after the age of 75.

Researchers also noticed differences between the sexes in the likelihood of death. It was found that about 15 percent of women died in the hospital after their heart attack, comparing to about 10 percent of men. Younger women with no chest pain were almost 20 percent more likely to die than their male counterparts. However, the women’s risk fell below that of men beyond the age of 65.

The precise reasons why heart attack symptoms differ between men and women remain unknown. However, health experts suspected that many factors might be involved, including hormones. For example, women who take birth control pills tend to have stickier blood vessels and arteries than men.

It is also known that the mechanism of blood clot formation in the heart artery might be different for young women who have a heart attack. More plaque erosion and sloughing off rather than the plaque rupturing were involved. Plaque rupturing is the classic way that heart attack occurs.

When a doctor sees a patient, who is having a heart attack but does not have chest pain or feels discomfort, he or she might not immediately realize that the patient might have a heart attack, especially in women. As such, the doctor might miss the opportunity to perform angioplasty, bypass surgery, or apply other lifesaving procedures to the patient.

In reality, many doctors tend to believe younger women should not have heart attack. Other studies also revealed that even women, who had experienced classic symptoms of a heart attack such as chest pain, were less likely to seek medical help than men.

Health experts cautioned that women, especially those who have diabetes, a family history of heart disease, or are smokers, should be aware that a lack of chest pain does not rule them out of the likelihood of a heart attack. This is actually true for both sexes.

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