Heart Attack Symptoms

You're no doubt familiar with the Hollywood style of heart attack, when an actor clutches his chest in sudden pain.

Although this scenario might be true for some heart attacks, they don’t always play out so dramatically. It's often in retrospect that patients recall the telling signs they paid little attention to at the time of the attack.

For example, some patients have said to me, "I had a bit of chest pain that I put down to indigestion", or "I felt a little tired and short of breath, but I just thought I was rundown". Doctors describe almost one in three heart attacks as 'silent', and half of these display symptoms we don't usually associate with heart attacks. The remaining fraction are completely silent and show no symptoms; only a subsequent ECG picks these up.

This is just one reason it's so important for you and your partner to have regular check-ups with your GP and to stay on top of heart health issues you can control, such as your weight, cholesterol levels and blood pressure. Specific signs accompany most heart attacks. You should familiarise yourself with these indicators (see 'Some Typical Warnings', below).

Signs for women

Many women suffer from these typical symptoms, but unfortunately, women are also prone to more covert attacks. For starters, women get less chest pain.

A 2003 study published in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association showed that the symptoms women most frequently reported were a combination of the usual characteristics and other, less obvious, factors: shortness of breath (58 per cent of women), weakness (55 per cent), unusual fatigue (43 per cent), cold sweat (39 per cent) and dizziness (39 per cent).

Forty-three per cent of women reported no chest pain - because this symptom would be better described as unfamiliar discomfort, rather than pain, in the chest. Failing to pay attention to these under-the-radar symptoms is the main reason women suffering a heart attack take longer to go to hospital.

A few years ago, an Irish study found that after the first sign of a heart attack, women waited an average of 14 hours before going to emergency, whereas men took just three hours. When symptoms were severe, women took three hours to go to hospital; men took two. Just be aware that, for reasons we don't fully understand, women get less chest pain with heart attacks than men do - and far less than movies may have led them to expect!

Call 000 ASAP

We need to change the fear people have about calling 000 and raising a false alarm. Don’t try to be brave; call for help. The Heart Foundation of Australia has a new campaign to get us all to act quickly: "It's OK to call 000".

Remember: if you’re having a heart attack, your heart muscle can't wait. If you think you might be having an attack, it's vital to get an ambulance to hospital - fast. The risk of death is greatest during the 'golden hour', the period immediately following a heart attack. As many as 30 per cent of people who have a heart attack will die within this first hour if they don't get to hospital.

When one of the three heart arteries is blocked, the heart may behave erratically: its electricity can go haywire and result in cardiac arrest or death. However, if you're already in hospital when a heart attack strikes, and physicians apply electric shock to your heart within a minute or so, statistics show that you have an almost 100 per cent chance of survival.

Recognising what instant, specialised care could achieve, Australia established its first coronary-care unit back in 1962. We were only the second country in the world, after England, to establish such a facility. We now have a network of coronary-care units that are there to save your life.

Some typical warnings

• Pain or discomfort. You may feel this as a tight ache, pressure, fullness or squeezing in the centre of your chest, throat, upper stomach or arm (or both arms); it lasts more than a few minutes, and the feeling may come and go.

• Shortness of breath

• Sweating

• Nausea

• Dizziness or light-headedness

• Panic

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