You need not have chest pain for heart attack

For long, a sudden chest pain was considered the main symptom of a heart attack, but a comprehensive study conducted by a Florida-based chest pain centre has found that many patients taken to hospitals for heart attacks never had chest pain. Consequently, they were less likely to be treated aggressively, according to a report on the NYT website.

The study done at the chest pain centre of Lakeland Regional Medical Center, Florida, showed that of 1.1 million people, 42% of women admitted to hospitals for heart attack never experienced chest pain, while the figure was 30.7% in the case of men.

The study, of which the Center's director John G Canto is an author, was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

According to leading cardiologist Ashwin Mehta, well over 20 to 30% of people admitted to hospitals in India have had painless heart attack. "My observation is that people suffering from hypertension and diabetes may have a painless heart attack. In such cases, the signals of discomfort are vague and weak. As a result, they get less opportunity for treatment," Mehta said.

Endorsing Mehta's views, JJ Hospital cardiology professor Anil Kumar said the silent heart attack phenomenon was not new. In most people suffering from high blood-pressure and diabetes, the tendency to have no or less chest pain is quite high. "In my opinion, people with high risk should take more care. Even if there is a slight doubt, they must be rushed to a cardiologist for basic treatment," said Kumar.

The Florida survey also revealed that women were more likely to succumb after a heart attack-the mortality rate for women was 15% and men 10%. Heart disease is the leading cause of death among both men and women not just in the US, but around the world too, killing about seven million people a year, said the NYT website. Until the 1980s, heart disease was largely considered a male problem and many studies that focused only on men drew a narrow picture of the typical signs of a heart attack.

The researchers used data from a national registry of people admitted to hospitals for heart attack from 1994 to 2006 to look at differences in symptoms and mortality rates among men and women. The analysis, covering over 1.1 million people, showed that while chest pain was the most frequent symptom of a heart attack in both men and women, a sizable minority of patients-about 35%-had suffered heart attacks without having chest pain.