Gender differences are important in heart attack

Reported by Susan Aldridge, PhD, medical journalist

Women have different symptoms from men when they are having a heart attack.
February is National Heart Month, and a good time to become more aware of the symptoms of a heart attack and how they differ between men and women. Dr C. Noel Bairey Merz, Medical Director of the Women's Health Program and the Preventive and Rehabilitative Cardiac Center at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center says that men tend to experience the traditional symptoms of heart attack - that is, squeezing chest pain and pressure. In women, dizziness, fatigue, nausea, vomiting and back and jaw pain are more common. Sometimes physicians mis-diagnose these as stress, panic disorder or even hypochondria.

Delays in treatment are serious if someone is having a heart attack. Here's what to do - call 911 and have the person chew one aspirin to help reduce the blood clot that is blocking the artery. And if the person is not breathing, do CPR (learn how, if you haven't already). Dr Merz is also Chair of the National Institutes of Health multi-center study Women's Ischemic Syndrome Evaluation which is looking at better approaches to diagnosis and evaluation for heart attack among women.

Source
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center 20th February 2007

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