Diagnosis of heart attacks in women

Women are more likely to encounter delays in establishing the diagnosis of heart attack than men. This is in part because women tend to seek medical care later than men, and in part because diagnosing heart attacks in women can sometimes be more difficult than diagnosing heart attacks in men. The reasons are:

1. Women are more likely than men to have atypical heart attack symptoms such as neck and shoulder pain, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and shortness of breath.
2. Silent heart attacks (heart attacks with little or no symptoms) are more common among women than among men.
3. Women have a higher occurrence than men of chest pain that is not caused by heart disease, for example chest pain from spasm of the esophagus.
4. Women are less likely than men to have the typical findings on the ECG that are necessary to diagnose a heart attack quickly.
5. Women are more likely than men to have angina (chest pain due to lack of blood supply to the heart muscle) that is caused by spasm of the coronary arteries or caused by disease of the smallest blood vessels (microvasculature disease). Cardiac catheterization with coronary angiograms (x-ray studies of the coronary arteries that are considered most reliable tests for CAD) will reveal normal coronary arteries and therefore cannot be used to diagnose either of these two conditions.
6. Women are more likely to have misleading, or "false positive" noninvasive tests for CAD then men.

Because of the atypical nature of symptoms and the occasional difficulties in diagnosing heart attacks in women, women are less likely to receive aggressive thrombolytic therapy or coronary angioplasty, and are more likely to receive it later than men. Women also are less likely to be admitted to a coronary care unit.

Treatment of heart attacks in women

Thrombolytic (fibrinolytic or clot dissolving) therapy has been shown to reduce death from heart attacks similarly in men and women; however, the complication of strokes from the thrombolytic therapy may be slightly higher in women than in men.

Emergency percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) or coronary stenting for acute heart attack is as effective in women as in men; however women may have a slightly higher rate of procedure-related complications in their blood vessels (such as bleeding or clotting at the point of insertion of the PTCA catheter in the groin) and death. This higher rate of complications has been attributed to women's older age, smaller artery size, and greater severity of angina. The long-term outcome of angioplasty or stenting however, is similar in men and women, and should not be withheld due to gender.

The immediate mortality from coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG) in women is higher than that for men. The higher immediate mortality rate has been attributed to women's older age, smaller artery size, and greater severity of angina (the same as for PTCA). Long term survival, rate of recurrent heart attack and/or need for reoperation, however, are similar in men and women after CABG.