Recognise the danger of silent heart attacks

MANY people who suffer a heart attack do not realise they have had one, and brush off the symptoms as something as minor as flu, a study has found.

Experts said 45% of people who have heart attacks suffered what they called the ‘silent’ variety, where patients believe they have strained a muscle or have indigestion.

Other signs include unexplained fatigue and discomfort in the jaw, upper back or arms.

Silent heart attacks can cause just as much damage as heart attacks which are instantly recognised. But as silent attacks do not come with the usual symptoms of chest or arm pain, patients do not seek treatment which can help prevent another.

The research, published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation, found people who have silent heart attacks are three times more likely to die of heart disease.

Researchers looked at the records of 9,500 middle-aged men and women between 1987 and 2013. They found nine years into the study, 7.4% of the volunteers had heart attacks.

Of that group, 317 volunteers had silent heart attacks, while 386 noticed heart attack symptoms immediately.

Lead researcher Dr Elsayed Soliman of the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Centre in North Carolina found the silent attacks are more common in men, but are more dangerous for women who are more likely to die from this type of attack.

Patients who have suffered a silent heart attack should be treated as if they had suffered the usual symptoms, according to Soliman.

“Patients need to quit smoking, reduce their weight, control cholesterol and blood pressure and get more exercise,” he advised.

Heart attacks are caused when the bloodflow to the heart is blocked, which can cause tissue to be damaged or die.

Doctors are able to identify silent attacks via an electrocardiogram (ECG) scan which reads any damage in the heart. – The Independent