With almost half of all heart attacks not getting necessary care, Soliman emphasized that doctors need to be on the lookout for any signs.
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Symptoms of silent heart attacks appear so mild that they are barely noticed, if at all.
They are detected later, usually when patients undergo an electrocardiogram, better known as an ECG or EKG, to check their heart’s electrical activity.
Signs of silent heart attack are unexplained fatigue and discomfort in the jaw, upper back or arms and pain, which can be mistaken for indigestion.
Researchers at Wake Forest University’s medical school led the government-funded study.
Black Americans are worse than whites when it comes to missing silent heart attacks.
“There could be many reasons for people not realizing they are having a heart attack”, Zhang added by email.
Researchers found that silent heart attacks made up 45 per cent of all heart attacks, increased the chances of dying from heart disease by three times, increased the chances of dying from all causes by 34 per cent and were more common in men but more likely to cause death in women. Their findings demonstrate that individuals who experience silent heart attacks need the same level of care and support. S., according to the study, published today (May 16) in the journal Circulation.
Like heart attacks that cause chest pain and other symptoms, these silent attacks can increase the risk of death from heart disease and other causes.
These heart attacks, which many people don’t realise they are having, are particularly risky for women – yet repeatedly confused with indigestion, a pulled muscle or the flu.
For the study, Soliman and his colleagues collected data on middle-aged men and women who took part in a study assessing the causes and outcomes of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis).
Julie Llamas Rickman remembers going to the emergency room five years ago thinking her asthma was acting up – she felt short of breath and exhausted – but the 41-year-old was shocked to learn she had two blockages in her heart, and had had an attack: “I just started crying”.
The study examined the heart attacks of between black and white patients as well as men and women.
The relatively young age of participants may have influenced the gender disparity in deaths from silent heart attacks, said Dr. Laxmi Mehta, director of the women’s cardiovascular health programme at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. However, the authors pointed out that the number of black Americans evaluated was probably too small to be certain.
Dr. Dennis A. Goodman, a cardiologist who specializes in internal medicine and lipidology at the New York University’s Langone Medical Center in New York City, noted that silent heart attacks are no less unsafe than traditional heart attacks.
“The modifiable risk factors are the same for both kinds of heart attacks”, Soliman said. “This study tells us they’re more frequent than maybe we have thought in past”.
Interestingly, despite a greater risk among men, it was women most likely to die of a silent heart attack, at least in this study analysis.
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Researchers accounted for many factors that could bias results, including smoking, body weight, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as income and education. Some patients may need blood thinners and many benefit from taking low-dose aspirin every day.
