Weekly Health Report: Recognizing a woman's heart attack symptoms

When a woman has a heart attack, the symptoms are often very different from a man's. Because heart disease was seen for so long as a "man's disease," researchers focused on males as they studied symptoms, treatments, and warning signs.

The prevailing thought was that the heart-friendly hormone estrogen kept women immune to heart disease until well after menopause. We know now that while estrogen does offer some protection, it isn't a guarantee, and as a woman goes through menopause, their risk factors for heart disease worsen.

As researchers began to study women and heart disease, they noticed the symptoms they were accustomed to in men weren't always present in the cases with women. The classic heart attack symptoms, found from research on men, are a severe pain in the chest, perhaps a pain or pressure in the upper back or in the left arm.

Women often have very different symptoms, which can lead to confusion. Common heart attack symptoms for women include:

• unexplained anxiety

• pain in the jaw, neck, back and shoulders

• discomfort in the shoulder or back

• nausea

• shortness of breath

• palpitations

• cold sweats

The key difference is there may not be the severe chest pain that is often found in men.

These symptoms can be caused by a variety of other disorders, but the key is for women, and their doctors, to be more aware that these symptoms could be warning signs of a heart attack. Any unusual symptom should be checked out. It is essential that women make it a priority to implement a heart healthy lifestyle and get regular medical checks and recommended screenings to reduce their risk of heart disease and heart attack.

Heart disease is largely preventable with a healthy lifestyle of regular exercise, good eating habits and avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol use. If unusual symptoms are noticed, though, they should not be ignored.

By Thomas Mulhearn, MD, cardiologist with Cardiovascular Specialists of SWLA and medical staff member of West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital