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Heart Attacks In Young Women Don't Always Cause Chest Pain
When you think of the signature symptom of a heart attack,
chest pain probably comes to mind. But according to a new study,
when some young and middle-aged women have a heart attack, they
won't experience this tell-tale sign.
"We need to move away from the image of an older man clutching
his chest, when we think about acute coronary syndrome," which
includes heart attacks and angina, study researcher Dr. Louise
Pilote, director of the Division of General Internal Medicine at
McGill University Health Centre, said in a statement. "The
reality is that chest pain, age and gender are no longer the
definers of a heart attack."
The new study, published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine,
is based on data from 1,000 young patients hospitalized for
acute coronary syndrome. Even though chest pain was the most
common symptom of heart attack in both sexes, researchers found
that one in five women age 55 and younger didn't experience
chest pain with their heart attack. Plus, women in general were
less likely to experience chest pain from heart attack than men.
The researchers also didn't find an association between not
experiencing chest pain and having a less severe heart attack.
"Our study demonstrates that young people and women who come
into the emergency without chest pain, but other telltale ACS
symptoms such as weakness, shortness of breath and/or rapid
heartbeats, are in crisis," Pilote said in the statement. "We
need to be able to recognize this and adapt to new standard
assessments in previously unrecognized groups such as young
women."
For women in particular, signs of a heart attack include feeling
pain in the arms, back, stomach or neck; feeling shortness of
breath; feeling lightheaded or nauseous; and having a pressure
or squeezing feeling in the chest, according to the American
These symptoms are more subtle than the obvious crushing chest
pain often associated with heart attacks. This may be because
women tend to have blockages not only in their main arteries,
but also in the smaller arteries that supply blood to the heart
-- a condition called small vessel heart disease or
microvascular disease. | |