Recent research shows that 2 out of 5 women having heart attacks don’t feel chest pain. Worse, women are more likely to die in the hospital while having a heart attack. The younger they are, the more likely they will die.
It makes sense. First, we’ve been conditioned for years to think of men when we think of heart attacks. Second, we think of age when we think of heart attacks. Third, we think of chest pain when we think of heart attacks.
A young woman not experiencing chest pain might just have cardiac arrest as her first sign of a heart attack. Not because she wasn’t feeling some sort of discomfort, but because healthcare providers were conditioned to look for other causes of her discomfort.
I hope more research is on its way to help us recognize heart attacks. Chest pain is a good standby and I still say if you have chest pain to call 911 instead of your doctor. Still, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other symptoms besides chest pain that could indicate a heart attack, especially in a pattern we haven’t learned to recognize yet.
It has taken us decades to figure out that women have heart attacks. Years after that before we figured out that women’s heart attacks don’t always feel the same as men. Hopefully we can open our minds to new ideas about heart disease and that just might lead to quicker recognition and more lives saved.