Wonderful Women Wednesday: Younger Women Miss Signs of Heart Attack
A new study revealed that heart attack symptoms in women under the age of 55 get missed or dismissed. The study included 30 women who were under the age of 55, with an average age of 48, who previously had heart attacks. All of these women were interviewed within a week of leaving the hospital after their heart attacks.
In their interviews the women talked about when they initially recognized their symptoms and what they did about them. These are the problems women had in recognizing their symptoms:
- They thought they were too young to be having a heart attack.
- They had atypical symptoms that lasted for more than a day.
- They assumed their symptoms were due to other conditions not related to a heart attack.
Some of the women went for treatment right away but others did not. Some said they were too busy, uncertainty, perceived negative treatment from physicians, and a preference to self medicate.
The women also noted that health care workers didn’t always immediately recognize the fact that they were having a heart attack.
The findings were presented on May 1 in Baltimore at the American Heart Association’s Quality of Care and Outcomes Research in Cardiovascular Disease and Stroke Conference 2008.
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