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Symptoms Of Heart Attack.in Women

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Do Women Have As Many Heart Attacks As Men

Women’s Heart Attack Symptoms

Coronary heart disease kills more than twice as many women as breast cancer in the UK every year, and it was the single biggest killer of women worldwide in 2019. Despite this, its often considered a mans disease.There are more than 800,000 women in the UK living with CHD, which is the main cause of heart attacks.

Each year more than 30,000 women are admitted to hospital in the UK due to a heart attack.

What To Do If You Notice Heart Attack Symptoms

If you do suspect you might have heart attack symptoms and some do appear weeks or months before a heart attack dont discount them out of hand or let them linger for too long. Women often think its something else, says Dr. Cho. The sad thing is, women do tend to have more blockages in their heart when they do need to have something done.

In fact, women tend to get heart disease later than men do. Men get in their 50s and 60s, and women get it in their 60s and 70s, says Dr. Cho. Women always get it 10 years later because of the effect of estrogen.The sooner you report a problem, the better chance you have of catching an issue before it becomes a full-blown heart attack. If you experience any of these symptoms, take note and visit your doctor as quickly as possible. Its very important that you not become your own doctor but let somebody else be your doctor, Dr. Cho says.

What Is A Silent Heart Attack

A silent heart attack is a heart attack that does not cause obvious symptoms. Your doctor may discover a silent heart attack days, weeks, or months later on an electrocardiogram test used to diagnose a heart problem.

Silent heart attack:

  • Is more common in women than in men
  • Can happen to women younger than 65. Younger women who have silent heart attacks without chest pain are more likely to die compared to younger men who have silent heart attacks without chest pain.2
  • Is more likely to happen in women with diabetes. Diabetes can change how you sense pain, making you less likely to notice heart attack symptoms.3

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Although men and women can experience chest pressure that feels like an elephant sitting across the chest, women can experience a heart attack without chest pressure, said Nieca Goldberg, M.D., medical director for the Joan H. Tisch Center for Women’s Health at NYUs Langone Medical Center and an American Heart Association volunteer. Instead they may experience shortness of breath, pressure or pain in the lower chest or upper abdomen, dizziness, lightheadedness or fainting, upper back pressure or extreme fatigue.

Even when the signs are subtle, the consequences can be deadly, especially if the victim doesnt get help right away.

Do Women Fare Better Or Worse Than Men After A Heart Attack

Stroke and heart attack symptoms can differ in men and women ...

Younger women under age 45 have a better outcome than men of a similar age. Scientists believe this is because of estrogen’s heart-protective effects. However, after menopause ends the protective benefits of estrogen, women fare worse than men. More specifically:

  • Women between the ages of 45 and 65 who’ve had a heart attack are more likely to die within a year of the event compared with men of this same age.
  • Women over age 65 are more likely to die within weeks of their heart attack than men over age 65.

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Gender Differences In The Management Of Cvd

Underestimation of cardiovascular risk in women results in delayed or even missed diagnoses of CVD. The use of investigations to detect severe coronary stenosis is often futile, as women have a lower prevalence of obstructive CAD but have greater symptom burden and functional impairment . The management of stable angina in both sexes remains similar, and includes lifestyle modifications, anti-anginal medications and pharmacological secondary prevention, revascularisation and rehabilitation.

Heart Attacks: Watch For The Signs

According to the American Heart Association, heart attack symptoms for women and men can include uncomfortable pressure, squeezing, fullness or pain in the chest cold sweats dizziness or fainting and anxiety or a sense of impending doom.

Although chest pain is common in women with a heart attack, some women do not experience chest pain at all.

Symptoms more common in women than men include shortness of breath nausea or vomiting pain in one or both arms and neck, back, jaw or stomach pain.

Heart disease kills about one woman every minute in the United States, according to the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women program. Despite this, only one in five women believe heart disease is the biggest threat to their health.

Also consider that heart disease is not an equal opportunity disease for women. Depending on your ethnicity and racial background, your heart disease risk may be higher or lower compared with other women. Go Red for Women details important information on this:

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Indigestion Nausea And Vomiting

Often people begin experiencing mild indigestion and other gastrointestinal problems before a heart attack. Because heart attacks usually occur in older people who typically have more indigestion problems, these symptoms can get dismissed as heartburn or another food-related complication.

If you normally have an iron stomach, indigestion or heartburn could be a signal that something else is going on.

Angina And Heart Attacks

Heart attack signs and symptoms in women

Angina is a syndrome caused by the supply of oxygen-rich blood to the heart becoming restricted.

People with angina can experience similar symptoms to a heart attack, but they usually happen during exercise and pass within a few minutes.

However, occasionally, people with angina can have a heart attack. It’s important to recognise the difference between the symptoms of angina and those of a heart attack. The best way to do this is to remember that the symptoms of angina can be controlled with medicine, but symptoms of a heart attack cannot.

If you have angina, you may have been prescribed medicine that improves your symptoms within 5 minutes. If the first dose does not work, a second dose can be taken after 5 minutes, and a third dose after a further 5 minutes.

If the pain persists, despite taking 3 doses of glyceryl trinitrate over 15 minutes, call 999 and ask for an ambulance.

Page last reviewed: 28 November 2019 Next review due: 28 November 2022

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How Does Heart Disease Affect Women

Despite increases in awareness over the past decades, only about half of women recognize that heart disease is their number 1 killer.1

Learn more facts about women and heart disease:

  • Heart disease is the leading cause of death for women in the United States, killing 314,186 women in 2020or about 1 in every 5 female deaths.2
  • Heart disease is the leading cause of death for African American and white women in the United States. Among American Indian and Alaska Native women, heart disease and cancer cause roughly the same number of deaths each year. For Hispanic and Asian or Pacific Islander women, heart disease is second only to cancer as a cause of death.3
  • About 1 in 16 women age 20 and older have coronary heart disease, the most common type of heart disease:4
  • About 1 in 16 white women , black women , and Hispanic women
  • About 1 in 30 Asian women

When To Call 911

If you suspect that you or someone else might be having a heart attack, call 911 or local emergency services right away. Immediate treatment can be lifesaving.

Long-term follow-up care is also important to improve outcomes.

Heart attack causes damage to your heart muscle, which can lead to potentially life threatening complications. Although more research is needed, some complications appear to be more common in women than men.

According to a 2016 review from the AHA, women are more likely than men to develop symptoms of heart failure following a heart attack. They also have a higher risk of death in the months and years following a heart attack.

The review found that 26 percent of women and 19 percent of men die within 1 year following a first heart attack, and 47 percent of women and 36 percent of men die within 5 years.

Some for these gender differences include:

  • There may be a delay in recognizing womens symptoms.
  • Women may be undertreated.

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How Can I Reduce My Risk Of Having A Heart Attack

Although there are several risk factors that you cant control, there are many ways you can help yourself and reduce your risk of a heart attack. These include:

  • Schedule a checkup: Find a primary care provider and see them at least once a year for a checkup or wellness visit. An annual checkup can catch many of the early warning signs of heart disease, including signs that you can’t feel. These include your blood pressure, blood sugar levels, cholesterol levels and more.
  • Quit tobacco products: This includes smokeless tobacco and all vaping products.
  • Exercise regularly: Aim for 20 to 30 minutes of moderately intense physical activity a week.
  • Eat a healthy diet: Examples include the Mediterranean or Dash diets. A plant-based diet approach is an excellent alternative.
  • Maintain a healthy weight: Your primary care provider can advise you on a healthy goal weight and provide you resources and guidance to help you reach that goal.
  • Manage your existing health conditions: This includes high cholesterol levels, high blood pressure and diabetes.
  • Reduce your stress: Consider techniques such as yoga, deep breathing and meditation.
  • Take your medications: Dont just take medications when you remember to or when you have a doctors appointment coming up.
  • Keep all your medical appointments: Seeing your healthcare providers regularly can help uncover heart-related issues or other medical problems you didn’t know you had. This can also help treat problems sooner rather than later.

Heart Attack Symptoms In Women Are They Different

What are the first signs of a heart attack in a woman? Simply click ...

Chest pain is still the most common sign of a heart attack for most women, although studies have shown that women are more likely than men to have symptoms other than chest pain or discomfort when experiencing a heart attack or other form of acute coronary syndrome , according to an article “Symptom Presentation of Women With Acute Coronary Syndromes Myth vs. Reality” published online Dec. 10 in the Archives of Internal Medicine. The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health.

Researchers examined 35 years of research that yielded 69 studies 69 studies and found that, depending on the size of the study , between 30 percent and 37 percent of women did not have chest discomfort during a heart attack. In contrast, 17 percent to 27 percent of men did not experience chest discomfort. Overall, the majority of women and men in the reviewed studies had chest discomfort with heart attack .

Study authors also found that older people are more likely to have heart attack without chest discomfort. However, because women are on average nearly a decade older than men at the time of their initial heart attack, the researchers call for more studies to determine the degree to which gender independently influences heart attack symptoms.

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How Are Heart Attacks Treated

Treating a heart attack means restoring blood flow to the affected heart muscle as soon as possible. This can happen in a variety of ways, ranging from medication to surgery. It’s extremely likely that treatment will use several of the following methods.

Supplementary oxygen

People having trouble breathing or with low blood oxygen levels will often receive supplementary oxygen along with other heart attack treatments. You can breathe the oxygen either through a tube that sits just below your nose or a mask that fits over your nose and mouth. This increases the amount of oxygen circulating in the blood and reduces the strain on your heart.

Medications

  • Anti-clotting medications: This includes aspirin and other blood-thinning medicines.
  • Nitroglycerin: This medicine is used to relieve chest pain. It also is a powerful vasodilator, meaning it causes blood vessels to widen so blood can pass through more easily.
  • Thrombolytic medications: These intravenous medications cause blood clots to break down and dissolve. These medications are usually used only within the first 12 hours after a heart attack.
  • Anti-arrhythmia medications: Heart attacks can often cause malfunctions in your hearts normal beating rhythm called arrhythmias. Some arrhythmias can be life-threatening. Anti-arrhythmia medications can stop or prevent these malfunctions.
  • Pain medications: The most common pain medication given during heart attack care is morphine. This can help alleviate chest pain.

What Women Need To Know About Subtle Heart Attack Symptoms

Heart disease is the cause of about one in every three deaths in the United States. Its the leading cause of death for men and women, yet its a common misconception that men are at greater risk for heart problems than women.

Many people assume that only older individuals, particular older men, are at risk for heart attack. But if your heart health is compromised, a heart attack can happen at any age and to either sex.

The most common symptom of a heart attack is chest pain for both women and men. But women are more likely to suffer a heart attack with more subtle symptoms, which makes recognizing a heart attack more difficult unless you know what to look for.

At NJ Cardiovascular Institute, our team is here to help you understand the most common signs of heart attacks in women. We regularly diagnose and treat heart disease to help women of all ages live longer, healthier lives.

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Heart Attack Risk Factors For Women

There are several factors that increase your chance of developing heartdisease. Almost 50% of all Americans have at least one of three major riskfactors for the condition:

  • High blood pressure: Women can develop high blood pressure as a side effect of birth control pills or during pregnancy. All women over 65 are more likely than men are to have high blood pressure.
  • High cholesterol: Estrogen seems to protect women against unhealthy levels of cholesterol. But after menopause, estrogen levels drop and high cholesterol becomes more likely.
  • Smoking: Although men are slightly more likely to smoke, the gap in cigarette usage between genders is smaller than ever and women are less likely to be able to quit successfully.

Additional risk factors include:

  • Excessive alcohol use

The Symptoms Of A Heart Attack Are Different For Women Knowing How To Spot Them Could Save Lives

Heart attack symptoms in women video

In the movies, a heart attack is a dramatic event. The victim clutches their chest and falls to the ground. In real life, though, the signs of a heart attack may be silent, or not nearly so obvious, especially for women.

Cardiovascular disease is the no. 1 cause of death in women, accounting for one in three female deaths each year. According to the American Heart Association, 80% of cardiovascular disease may be prevented.

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with heart disease, you can get support from your Asuris health plan. Many plans include Care Management, which can help you learn more about your disease and understand your treatment options.

Learning the signs of heart attacks in women can save lives. Learning how to prevent heart attacks can, too.

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Signs And Symptoms Of A Heart Attack In Women

Heart attack symptoms can vary from person to person but the most common signs of a heart attack are:

  • chest pain or discomfort in your chest that suddenly occurs and doesn’t go away. It may feel like pressure, tightness or squeezing
  • the pain may spread to your left or right arm or may spread to your neck, jaw, back or stomach
  • you may also feel sick, sweaty, light-headed or short of breath.

Other less common symptoms include:

  • a sudden feeling of anxiety that can feel similar to a panic attack
  • excessive coughing or wheezing

If you think you’re having a heart attack, call 999 for an ambulance immediately.

Women may be less likely to seek medical attention and treatment quickly, despite the warning signs. This can dramatically reduce your chance of survival. Rapid treatment is essential, and the aim is to restore blood flow to the affected part of the heart muscle as soon as possible. This helps to limit the amount of damage to the heart.

Heart Attack And Women

A heart attack happens when blood flow in an artery to the heart is blocked by a blood clot or plaque, and the heart muscle begins to die. Women are more likely than men to die after a heart attack. But if you get help quickly, treatment can save your life and prevent permanent damage to your heart.

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What Is Heart Disease

Heart disease is a general term that includes many types of heart problems. It’s also called cardiovascular disease, which means heart and blood vessel disease.

Coronary artery disease is the most common type of heart disease in both men and women. It happens slowly over time when a sticky substance called plaque builds up in the arteries that supply your heart muscle with blood. The plaque narrows or blocks blood flow to the heart muscle and can lead to:

  • Angina – chest pain from lack of blood flow
  • Heart attacks – when part of the heart muscle dies from loss of blood flow
  • Heart failure – when your heart can’t pump enough blood to meet your body’s needs
  • Arrhythmia – a problem with the rate or rhythm of your heartbeat

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