No pain heart attacks deadly

Agencies
Rediff
Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Latest research suggests that pain-free hearts attacks
are more deadly than the painful ones.

What’s more the research, published in Tuesday’s edition
of medical journal Chest, found that one in 12 heart
attack victims suffers a silent one increasing the
possibilty of misdiagnosis or improper treatment.

The study found that patients with atypical symptoms were
10 times more likely to be misdiagnosed and three times
more likely to die than those who suffer chest pain.

The study was conducted by a team at the St Michael’s
Hospital in Toronto.

The victims of silent heart attacks do not experience the
typical crushing pain in the chest. They have more
moderate symptoms such as shortness of breath, excessive
sweating, fainting, nausea and vomitting and nagging pain
in the shoulder or jaw.  

The study also found that women over 65 tend to more
prone to silent attacks than men in the same age group.
The risk increases when combined with chronic conditions
like diabetes.

Lead researcer cardiologist David Brieger of Sydney’s
Concord Hospital said the findings should serve as an
alarm bell for doctors have to be alert and open-minded
while diagnosing heart attacks.

"Often, when a patient arrives at the hospital without
chest pain, it is only after blood test results come back
or other diagnoses are excluded that the physician
reassesses the situation and realises it is an acute
cardiac event after all," he said.

"We hope our findings will remind physicians that these
events do occur in the absence of chest pain and will
prompt them to make the diagnosis and institute the
appropriate treatment more rapidly."

A heart attack occurs when a coronary artery, which
supplies oxygen and nutrients to the heart muscle,
becomes blocked by a buildup of fatty plaque. To conduct
the study, researchers analysed data from 20,881 patients
in 14 countries who were hospitalised with a variety of
health conditions between July, 1999 and June, 2002.  

Of the 1,763 patients who had heart attacks without
experiencing chest pain, 13 per cent died in hospital,
compared to 4.3 per cent of those with chest pain.
Almost 24 per cent of patients without chest pain were
misdiagnosed when they arrived at the hospital, compared
to only 2.4 per cent who had typical symptoms.

More at:
http://us.rediff.com/news/2004/aug/10heart.htm

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