Symptoms of a Heart Attack: Women vs Men

Why are there different symptoms between the two genders?
Does this difference in symptoms lead to more death in one gender than the other?

Searching through the internet, I did not come across a solid reason why there are different symptoms in men and women. However, Healthline published an article called Symptoms of a Heart Attack by Colleen Story that stated “Only in recent decades have scientists realized that heart attack symptoms in women can be quite different than those in men. They didn’t realize this earlier simply because they weren’t conducting studies on women, believing whatever they found in men would be the same for women. When they started studying women more closely, however, they realized this was not the case.”

Although men are more likely to get heart attacks than women, it seems that women died more from heart attacks than men. I think that the difference in symptoms does play a role,but there are also other contributing factors , such as HDL levels and menstrual cycle, that were presented by Dr. Merz, which contributes to the death of women.

Statistics in Women

“8.6 million women die from heart disease each year,worldwide, which accounts for a third of all deaths in women.” According to Women’s Heart Foundation,the only Non-Governmental Organization that designs and implements demonstration projects for the prevention of heart disease, is a 501(c)3 charitable organization dedicated to improving survival and quality of life,there are about: 435,000 American women have heart attacks annually.

• 83,000 of those women are under the  age of 65
• 35,000 of those women are under 55.

Symptoms of Heart attack in Women & Men
Women suffer from a number of different symptoms related to heart attack in comparison to men. According to the National Institute for Health, these major symptoms include “pain in the arm (especially left arm), jaw pain,  nausea and vomiting, overwhelming and unusual fatigue, sometimes with shortness of breath, and light headedness or sweating.”
Men’s symptoms are typically “shortness of breath, weakness, cold sweat, and dizziness.” However it seems that the most common symptom of a heart attack in both men and women is chest tightness or pressure and/or pain in the jaw,neck, check, arms or back.

Source: SMRT Indiana

Conditions found in Women & Men associated with Heart Attacks
Researchers  surveyed 2,990 women and men from an international study of heart attack patients 18-55 years old. The researchers found out “women who had heart attacks are more likely to have poorer physical and mental health in comparison to men with heart attacks at a similar age.” These same women were also more likely to have other conditions associated with heart disease:

(Women vs Men)

• “diabetes (40 percent vs. 27 percent)”
• “obesity (55 percent vs. 48 percent)”
• “history of stroke (6 percent vs. 3 percent)”
• “heart failure (6 percent vs. 2 percent)”
• “renal failure (13 percent vs. 9 percent)”
• “depression (49 percent vs. 24 percent)”

“Compared with young men, women under 55 years are less likely to have heart attacks. But, when they do occur, women are more likely to have medical problems, poorer physical and mental functioning, more chest pain and a poorer quality of life in the month leading up to their heart attack,” says Rachel Dreyer, Ph.D., the study’s lead author and a research fellow in cardiovascular medicine at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, CT. I think there could be a correlation between women’s ages and how severe their heart attack symptoms are. I wonder if it due to the state their bodies are in if they end up getting a heart attack.

Study Comparing heart attacks symptoms in women & men
Researchers from the University of Rochester’s nursing school in New York studied 41 women and 59 men who’d had heart attacks.

• “Most participants were white”
• “The women were about 70 years old”
• “The men’s average age of 60”

The researchers had their subjects describe their symptoms. These were the results:

• “Pain, shortness of breath, fatigue. No gender differences”
• “Right-side chest discomfort. 4.7 times more likely to be reported by men”
• “Throat discomfort. 12 times more likely to be reported by women”
• “Discomfort. 2.7 times more likely to be reported by men”
• “Dull ache. 3.9 times more likely to be reported by men”
• “Pressing on the chest. 7.3 times more likely to be reported by women”
• “Vomiting. 3.9 times more likely to be reported by women”
• “Indigestion. 3.7 times more likely to be reported by men”

Researching this particular topic, I came across some interesting information about the difference in women’s heart attacks to mens from the Woman’s Heart Foundation.

• “Women wait longer than men to go to an emergency room when having a heart attack. This is because physicians cannot recognize the presence of a heart attack in women as easily  because “characteristic” patterns of chest pain and EKG changes are less frequently present.”
• “Women are twice as likely as men to die within the first few weeks after suffering a heart attack”
• “Women are less likely than men to receive beta blockers, ACE inhibitors and aspirin – therapies known to improve survival.”

Source: Cardiology associates of North Mississippi

So it seems with heart attacks, women do get the short end of the stick. However it does not mean that heart attacks for men are a walk in the park. In the end, I could not come across any reason or explanation of why women have different symptoms to men. I wonder if the cause for the different symptoms in women could be biological or socio-demographic. Could it be that because it’s harder to detect a heart attack in women, that hurts them in the long run? If that’s the case, then we really should find a way to detect heart attacks in women more efficiently.