Chest pain may not be a reliable indicator of heart attacks in women

Swiss researchers from the University Hospital Basel have found that chest pain, similar to that experienced by men having heart attacks, cannot reliably be used to diagnose major heart attacks in women.
The survey included 2500 people with chest pain, 1700 men and 800 women.

Of these patients, only 22 percent of men and 18 percent of women were actually suffering a heart attack.

The survey assessed the ability of 34 different characteristics of chest pain to determine the cause behind it. These included the intensity of the pain, location and whether factors like breathing and movement affected the pain.

The researchers failed to find any substantial differences between the factors to help diagnose whether a woman was having a heart attack. Their findings are published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

The researchers say that emergency room doctors should use other concrete heart tests to diagnose a heart attack in women. The chest pain, although similar to what men experienced could not be used to diagnose the reason for it.

“Doctors must be much more aggressive in trying to diagnose heart disease through EKG and troponins, because without those objective data it’s very hard to tell it’s a woman’s heart,” said Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

“None of the chest pain characteristics were helpful in differentiating [heart attack] from other causes of chest pain,” Steinbaum said. “If a woman had chest pain, it was very difficult to determine if that chest pain was her heart.”

Rather than chest pain, women may experience pain in the stomach, back and neck. Women are also more likely than men to experience shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, or pain in the jaw.