Doctors often miss Wilder ‘blessed every film’ says Mel Brooks signs of heart attack in women
Tens of thousands of heart attacks are missed in women every year, a British study has found.
A third of women are given the wrong diagnosis, and doctors fail to treat women in time because they do not realise that ‘‘middleaged blokes’’ are not the only people to suffer heart attacks, researchers said.
About 68,000 British women suffer heart attacks each year and researchers warned that palpitations or even a ‘‘funny turn’’ could be a sign. While men are more likely to have heart attacks, the study suggests a reason why they are more often fatal for women.
Researchers at the University of Leeds used data on almost 600,000 patients in 243 NHS hospitals over nine years. They found that 35 per cent of women, 65,976 patients, were first told they were suffering from another condition, 50 per cent more than men after adjusting for age and other illness.
Patients whose heart attacks were misdiagnosed were 70 per cent more likely to die, with 4.2 per cent dead in a month compared with 2.5 per cent of those given the correct diagnosis straightaway, according to the study published in European Heart Journal: Acute Cardiovascular Care.
Chris Gale, who led the study, said: ‘‘Typically, when we think of a person with a heart attack, we envisage a middle-aged man who is overweight, has diabetes and smokes. This is not always the case.’’
The problem begins, Professor Gale said, when women do not realise that they are having a heart attack. ‘‘It’s not necessarily 20 minutes of crushing chest pain, it may be some chest pain and a funny turn, or a feeling of palpitations and a bit of chest pain,’’ he said.
‘‘She doesn’t recognise that she is having a heart attack so she goes to her GP, and then they don’t call for an ambulance so she ends up going to A&E eventually, and by the time she gets to see a specialist it’s a late diagnosis.’’
He also said that NHS staff needed to improve their knowledge. ‘‘Healthcare professionals need to be aware that we need to give all eligible treatments to females and we need to all be aware that females who suffer a heart attack are at risk of death,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s not just middle-aged blokes, it’s older females who are sitting in the corner saying ’treat him with the broken arm first’.’’
Another study by the same team, using Swedish data on 180,000 patients, found that women were 13 per cent more likely to die of the commonest type of heart attack and 50 per cent more likely to die of the other main kind, Dr Gale and his colleagues told the European Society of Cardiology congress in Rome.
A spokeswoman for NHS England said: ‘‘We are working hard to continually improve tests for accurately diagnosing heart attacks in both men and women so that correct treatment can begin without delay, ensuring the best possible recovery for patients. We are also working to increase awareness of signs and symptoms of heart attack.’’ Gene Wilder, whose wild curls and startling blue eyes brought a frantic air to roles in the movies Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles, died yesterday at the age of 83, his family said.
Wilder, whose best work included collaborations with director-writer Mel Brooks and actor-comedian Richard Pryor, died at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
Wilder’s nephew, Jordan Walker-Pearlman, said the actor had chosen to keep his illness secret so that children who knew him as Willy Wonka would not equate the whimsical character with an adult disease.
Wilder’s barely contained hysteria made him a go-to lead for Brooks, who cast him in Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and The Producers.
‘‘Gene Wilder – one of the truly great talents of our time. He blessed every film we did with his magic & he blessed me with his friendship,’’ Brooks tweeted.
Besides his classic collaborations with Brooks, Wilder paired memorably with comedian Richard Pryor in hits Silver Streak and Stir Crazy.
Wilder also was active in promoting ovarian cancer awareness after his wife, comedian Gilda Radner, whom he married in 1984, died of the disease in 1989.
He helped found the Gilda Radner Ovarian Cancer Detection Center in Los Angeles and cofounded Gilda’s Club, a support organization that has branches throughout the United States.
Born Jerome Silberman to Russian immigrants in Milwaukee, Wilder studied at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre in Bristol, England, and then studied method acting at the Actors Studio.
A leading role in a play that also starred Anne Bancroft, who was dating her future husband Brooks, led to Wilder becoming a top member of Brooks’ stock company of crazies, some of whom branched out with Wilder into other film ventures.
Wilder’s first movie role was a small part as a terrified undertaker who was abducted by Bonnie and Clyde in Arthur Penn’s 1967 film of the same name.
The following year he was panic-stricken Leo Bloom to Zero Mostel’s conniving Max Bialystock in Brooks’ The Producers, picking up an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor.
While it initially got a tepid response, the movie with its overthe-top song Springtime for Hitler, went on to become a cult favorite and, years later with a different cast, a monster hit on Broadway.
Wilder was a last-minute fill-in as the ‘‘Waco Kid’’ in Brooks’ Blazing Saddles’ in 1974, and with Brooks wrote the screenplay for Young Frankenstein released later that year, also to big box office returns.
The two were nominated for best screenplay Oscars, but lost to Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo for The Godfather Part II.
With Brooks alumni Madeline Kahn and Marty Feldman, Wilder made his directorial debut with 1975’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother, and directed several other movies with uneven results.
Wilder’s title role in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory earned him a Golden Globe nomination in 1971, and he was nominated again in that category in 1976 for Silver Streak.
He won an Emmy in 2003 for outstanding guest actor in a comedy series for appearances on Will and Grace.
Wilder’s memoir, Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art, was released in 2005 and he collaborated with oncologist Steven Piver on the book Gilda’s Disease in 1998.
He was hospitalised in 1999 with non-Hodgkin lymphoma but was said to be in complete remission in 2005. Wilder lived in Stamford in a house built in 1734 that he had shared with Radner, writing and painting watercolors with his wife Karen Boyer, whom he married in 1991.
‘‘Typically, when we think of a person with a heart attack, we envisage a middleaged man who is overweight, has diabetes and smokes. This is not always the case.’’ Chris Gale, University of Leeds