Heart Attack Pain Similar for Men and Women

Health - Published on Tuesday, November 26th, 2013 at 4:22 pm

Women are more likely than men to die after a heart attack, and some researchers have suggested a reason: Doctors may be misdiagnosing women more often because their symptoms differ from those experienced by men.

But a study published Monday indicates that too much has been made of gender differences in chest pain, the hallmark symptom of heart disease. Although the researchers found some distinctions, no pattern was clearly more characteristic of women or could be used to improve heart attack diagnosis in women, the authors concluded.

“We should stop treating women differently at the emergency room when they present with chest pain and discomfort,” said Dr. Maria Rubini Gimenez, a cardiologist at University Hospital Basel and lead author of the new study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Instead, she said, all patients with acute chest pain must be evaluated for heart attack with appropriate diagnostics, including an electrocardiogram and blood tests.

Roughly 80 percent of people who have chest pain and discomfort are suffering from indigestion, acid reflux or another relatively benign condition, said Dr. John G. Canto, director of the chest pain center at Lakeland Regional Medical Center in Lakeland, Fla., who has researched heart attack diagnosis.

“The trick is, how do you figure out the 15 to 20 percent actually having a heart attack?” he said. The new research confirms “that there is a lot of overlap in symptoms between patients who are having a heart attack and those who aren’t, and there is a lot of overlap in symptoms between men and women.”

The new study examined 2,475 patients, including 796 women, who reported to emergency rooms at nine hospitals in Switzerland, Spain and Italy complaining of acute chest pain between April 21, 2006, and Aug. 12, 2012.

The conventional wisdom is that men experience often crushing chest pain during a heart attack, while women may complain of pressure or pain in the lower chest or abdomen, which may spread to the shoulders or arms.