The longer a heart attack is left undiagnosed and untreated, the more the heart muscle can be irreversibly damaged.
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The condition is 50% more likely to be missed in women than in men, with many female patients wrongly told they have other conditions such as indigestion.
Women are twice as likely to receive a wrong diagnosis for a heart attack as men, according to a new study, in which almost a third (29.9 per cent) of all heart attack patients had an initial diagnosis which was different from their final diagnosis.
Dr Mike Knapton, of the British Heart Foundation which helped fund the research, added: “Thanks to this study we now have a better understanding of the experiences of both men and women when they are diagnosed as having suffered a heart attack”.
NSTEMI heart attacks are more common and involved a partial blockage of one or more arteries.
“This is not always the case”.
Alison Fillingham, 49, from Bolton, had a heart attack in June and is now recovering from bypass surgery.
Up to 28,000 women die from heart attacks each year in the United Kingdom, according to British Heart Foundation (BHF).
Someone suffers a heart attack approximately every three minutes in the UK. Being diagnosed quickly and correctly is vital to ensure the best chance of recovery.
The two principle types of heart attack are STEMI and NSTEMI.
“She goes to her GP, and they don’t call for an ambulance so instead she goes to A&E eventually, and by the time she sees a specialist it’s a late diagnosis”.
Dr Chris Gale said that an initial misdiagnosis can have “potentially important clinical repercussions, including an increased risk of death”.
Nearly 200,000 people who took part in a study of 600,000 heart attack patients had received the wrong diagnosis initially, researchers at Leeds University found.
A heart attack is caused when a blood clot forms in a narrowed coronary artery, cutting off the blood supply to the heart.
“It’s not necessarily 20 minutes of crushing chest pain, it may be some chest pain and a amusing turn, or a feeling of palpitations and a bit of chest pain”, he said.
An NHS England spokesman said survival rates for heart attacks were the best they had ever been and swift diagnosis and treatment were key. Both result in serious damage to the heart muscle.
The British Heart Foundation, which part-funded the research, is urging both the public and health care professionals to be more aware of the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, to avoid mistakes being made in diagnosis.
The study, funded by the British Heart Foundation, appears August 30 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
The home carer and former nurse said: “I had pain in my collarbone and neck but I just thought it was because I’d had a hectic few days”.
Experts say another mistake is to assume that a heart attack strikes suddenly, with the victim clutching their chest and keeling over. The diagnosis of NSTEMI heart attacks is made more hard by the fact that some patients will have a normal electrocardiogram (ECG) and over half will have non-diagnostic ECG changes.
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He said many doctors expect victims to be an “overweight, middle-aged bloke, smoking and clutching his chest” while patients often fail to recognise the symptoms.
