What are the symptoms of heart attack in women and how is heart attack diagnosed?
Women are more likely to encounter delays in establishing the diagnosis of heart attack than men. This is in part because women tend to seek medical care later than men, and in part because diagnosing heart attacks in women can sometimes be more difficult than diagnosing heart attacks in men. The reasons include: • Women are more likely than men to have atypical heart attack symptoms such as: • neck and shoulder pain, • abdominal pain, • nausea, • vomiting, • fatigue, and • shortness of breath. • Silent heart attacks (heart attacks with little or no symptoms) are more common among women than among men. • Women have a higher occurrence than men of chest pain that is not caused by heart disease, for example chest pain from spasm of the esophagus. • Women are less likely than men to have the typical findings on the ECG that are necessary to diagnose a heart attack quickly. • Women are more likely than men to have angina (chest pain due to lack of blood supply to the heart muscle) that is
