WOMEN AND HEART ATTACK
Do hospitals carry out appropriate diagnostic tests to detect heart attack symptoms in women? A panel of leading cardiologists at a major medical conference says perhaps they’re getting old tests that don’t tell the whole story.
According to new research, heart attack victims who don't experience chest pain have thrice the death rate of other cardiac patients, and are less likely to receive medications to slow the progression of the attack. Many of these patients who have no chest pain are women, giving rise to an important question- are doctors properly diagnosing heart disease in women?
“It happened all of a sudden, in the middle of the night. I had atypical symptoms, like nausea and cold sweats,” says Maxine Levy. Maxine was just 41 years old when she experienced symptoms that most would write off as mild discomfort from stomach trouble.
But she remembered her aunt’s story. “Many years ago my aunt had told the story of when she had her heart attack. The day she had a heart attack, she had eaten a corn beef sandwich for lunch. And when she called the doctor to say she wasn’t feeling well, he simply blamed it on the corn beef sandwich.”
Maxine correctly diagnosed herself because of that memory. She had a heart attack, and got herself treated in time.
But sadly, statistics show that approximately 250,000 women die annually from heart disease. Part of the reason so little is known about heart attacks in women is that heart disease diagnosis and treatment research studies have not been conducted on women to the same extent that they have been on men. Dr. Jennifer Mieres is leading research to determine the best way to detect heart disease in women, and she believes that the traditional treadmill test might be insufficient. “The exercise ECG as it exists today may not be sufficiently accurate in women. We’re going to do a comparison between the traditional exercise ECG and newer cardiac imaging studies, which we believe are much more accurate in women,” says Dr. Mieres, who now encourages these tests now, rather than the treadmill test. “Women need to realize that heart disease is an equal opportunity killer. Heart disease takes more lives than all cancers combined, in the United States,” says Dr. Mieres. “Women need to be proactive and get themselves tested. Insisting on a cardiac imaging study can help them understand whether the symptoms are from heart disease or from something else.”
Dr. Mieres says cardiac MRI is perhaps the next phase of diagnostic testing for women. These special imaging studies provide detailed information about the small vessels of the heart, making it a more efficient way to detect heart disease in women.