Yes…Young Women Can Have Heart Attacks!
Not too long ago I was told a terrifying tale about a young woman and a heart attack. The 40-year-old woman arrived at the emergency room of her local hospital displaying a multitude of symptoms that made it clear that a heart attack was in progress - at least it was obvious to a nurse in the ER.
After hooking the woman up to medications to help deal with the attack, the nurse alerted other doctors to the case and then went home at the end of her shift figuring all was well. When the nurse returned to work the next day, she was shocked to discover that doctors in the ER had stopped the medications, told the woman she was simply having a panic attack and sent her home. The woman suffered major damage to her heart.
Unfortunately, many doctors don’t suspect a heart attack when they see a young woman with chest pain. And, while it’s true that heart attacks are more common among young men than young women, women are not exempt . Figures from the National Center for Health Statistics show that in 1998, approximately 11,000 women under the age of 45 were hospitalized for heart attacks.
When a heart attack strikes a young woman, she is likely to suffer debilitating damage or die. In a study that looked at gender differences among heart attack victims, researchers found that heart attacks were far more likely to be deadly if the victim was female. In fact, when Dr. Viola Vaccarino and her colleagues looked only at patients under age 50, they found that twice as many women as men died in the days following a heart attack.
Part of the explanation for this frightening statistic is that young women with heart attacks often get either no treatment or they receive delayed care. Sometimes women, and sometimes their doctors, miss the attack because they don’t realize that the symptoms of a heart attack may vary with the patient’s gender, says Vaccarino, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Medicine. Compared to men, during a heart attack women are much more likely to experience back pain, indigestion and nausea and/or vomiting, rather than chest pain, as their symptoms, according to an earlier study by Vaccarino.
And while the bigger teaching hospitals are beginning to catch on, it’s still not uncommon for doctors at smaller institutions to miss heart attacks in younger women, says Dr. Marianne Legato, founder and director of The Partnership for Women’s Health and a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. Legato recently reviewed the records for a young woman in her 20s who showed up at a hospital complaining of nausea and vomiting, as well as chest pain. The possibility that the woman might be having a heart attack never occurred to the doctors examining her. She was dead within 48 hours.
When Vaccarino and her colleagues looked at death rates from heart attacks in young people, they found that misdiagnosis and delays in medical care could only explain part of the discrepancy between men and women. This is an area that needs further research, she says.
But, while doctors are at a loss to explain why heart attacks occur in otherwise healthy young women, they have pinpointed a group who are at an elevated risk. Women who smoke, are obese, have diabetes and/or high blood pressure are more likely than others to have a heart attack, Legato says. “And diabetes is a much more important risk factor for women than men,” she adds. “Once you have it, your risk for [heart disease] is four to six times higher.”
Ultimately, women need to know the signs of a heart attack and demand proper care if they think they may be having one. If you have risk factors for a heart attack, no matter whether you are in your 20s or 30s or 40s, and you feel you are experiencing a heart attack, don’t allow the doctor to dismiss your symptoms as indigestion or anxiety. Tell them you want to be tested. If you don’t, the consequences could be deadly.
The following symptoms could signal heart ills:
- Angina (chest pain). Can also include back pain or deep aching and throbbing in the left or right bicep or forearm.
- Breathlessness. Also may include waking up having difficulty catching one’s breath.
- Clammy perspiration.
- Dizziness. Unexplained lightheadedness, even blackouts.
- Edema. Swelling, particularly of the ankles or lower legs.
- Fluttering. Rapid heartbeats.
- Gastric upset (or nausea).
- Heavy fullness. Also may include pressure-like chest pain between breasts and radiating to left arm or shoulder.
Sources: ACOG/Medical Tribune News Service
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Why don’t you mention birth control pills as a risk factor?
I am 30 years old and am struggling with a serious addiction. I also have type 1 diabetes and smoke. Stupid I know but none the less its issues I have to work on. For the past couple of months I have been having what seems to everyone else to be panic attacks. My heart rate is usually anywhere from 100-134 bpm. I have a sharp pain near my left shoulder blade and heartburn that is almost intolerable, it feels like boiling lava in my chest! I was admitted to ccu at our hospital last month and ended up signing myself out because they were doing nothing to find the cause of all of this. It has continued and I am really concerned but I don’t think this hospital will treat me because I walked out. Does this sound like a heart attack????
im 15 years old, and i keep getting heart pains like my heart skipping a beat every time i breath deeply or laugh, im really freaked out, but dont want to end up in the hospital, or die.
My mom says i have a extra beat in my heart, but its never done this before. as i am writting this, my heart is skipping beats and im pretty worried. but i have non of the other signals, just the aches in my heart like skipping beats. please anyone tell me what to do. ive tried just laying down and stoping any activity but its not working.
Two wks. Ago my 20yr.old daughter collapsed playing indoor soccer, she was rushed to the hospital and never woke up. She died 12hours later. They said it was her heart. Please go have a scan, ekg or whatever you need, just to be sure. The thought of another parent going through this pain is unbearable. We would have had her Che ked if anyone would have told us that this could of happened. No doctor has ever said anything to us. There are ways to detect some of these problems. God bless you, Ill be praying for you.
Dear Melissa,
I am so sorry for your loss, I couldn’t imagine the grief you are going through. Thank you for your concern for Alannah. If you need to talk to anyone we offer free and confidential mentoring. Please let me know if would like a mentor, just leave another comment and I will arrange it. Also, we have had a personal friend of our website write an article about her journey through grief, http://powertochange.com/life/talk-to-broken-hearted/ I hope that this article would be of benefit to you. Again, your heart to help others not endure this same tragedy is something that should be commended. Our prayers are with you and your family.
i’m 30 years old, yesterday i had a compressive pain in my chest to my lt shoulder and back up to my throat and lower jaw with my teeth lasts for about 20 min,my husband called a doctor , he told him to give me sublingual dinitrate, it was like magic in few minutes my pain just gone… i don’t smoke but i’m always facing huge stress in my life that makes me hate my life and hating be alife.. now am i a cardiac patient or susceptible to be.
hello, my name is frightened. i am sixteen years old and have been diagnosed with a heart murmur since birth, it has never been a big obstacle in my life as life altering or serious. my doctor has never given me different medications for it or anything, just sometimes my heart skips beats or speeds up randomly, sometimes it hurts or scares me but im used to it. recently i have been experiencing really deep pains in my left arm, and slight numbness… my mom dismissed it as stress or as a pinched nerve in my arm and said to try to sleep it off. So i came to her later that same night and while i was telling her i felt dizzy and horrible, i saw black and next thing i knew my mom was helping me up off the floor. I felt okay after all of it but i still feel those feelings and i get scared… havent gone to a doctor, or anything .. should i or am i too young?
When I was 41 a, *ahem* very important, very esteemed cardiologist from Vanderbilt saw me after an EKG showed evidence I had had a previous heart attack and an echocardiogram showed problems with two different heart valves. He spent about a minute and a half with me, asked me if I still got periods, and when I told him “yes,” he said, “Oh, well if you’re premenopausal, we don’t need to worry about anything.” Now I’m 44 and living with heart failure (and still premenopausal, BTW). The dismissive attitude of doctors (particularly older, male ones) has killed a lot of women and will continue to do so until enough of them exit the profession.
I’m a 27 year old female and just got home from the hospital for what is being called a heart attack. You’re never too young and if you feel something that isn’t normal to your body and you have the “feeling” that something isn’t right, please PLEASE go see your doctor or go to the emergency room. If I didn’t make the choice to go who knows if I would still be here. For me it started as a kidney infection last week and I was bedridden for 2 days with a fever. Then one of the early mornings I woke up with extremely intense chest pains, felt like stabbing pains and difficulty catching my breath. The usual me would have just shrugged it off, but something in me told me I should call my nurse and see if my body is having some kind of reaction to the antibiotics I was taking for my kidney. Well, after 3 days of being in the hospital, getting 2 EKG scans, 1 echocardiogram and 1 Cardiac Catherization I’m glad I made the choice to get checked….had I not I could of possibly risked having a heart attack and dying. While I was hospitalized I also began having the same intense sharp pains in my chest and they had to give me nitra (used for heart attack patients to calm the affects down). Turns out my heart ended up having inflammation around it due to my kidney infection and thank goodness it wasn’t more severe. The point I’m trying to make is that no matter how old or how young you are, if you’re feeling something going on in your body trust yourself and your feelings and get it checked out.
I have similar ER experiences twice. One at the age of 30 and the second one late 30′s. Both times they didn’t find anything and they called it a panic attack. My doctor wants to rule out any cardiac problem, since I have normal numbers on every category, even though I have heart skips and weird symptoms almost everyday. (not bad enough to go to ER). Is it possible to have a heart problem with normal or low blood pressure and no cholesterol?
@melissa
im so sorry for your loss. my heart goes out to you, i cant imagine what you and your family are going through, all i can say is im sorry.
and thankyou for the concern, i now live with my mom, and i told her whats been happening, and just the other night it happened again, and were gunna go to the doctors to get it checked out.
my name is brittney,i was turning 26 the day after i had a heart Attack! the first hospital that i had gone to had no clue as to why the ekg was reading the way it was and they were giving me pill after pill at the time i had no clue as to what the pills where but they were to stop the pain on the heart attack……that day i was not feeling well i was sweating and felt like i had like acid issues in the center of my chest the feeling never let up…….i still keep going with my day (it was my birthday the next day) i now take multi diff medication and no longer feel like myself… the energy for life i once had i no longer have i am always tired and i am still living in fear of going to die, i had the attack in july and another in january i have 2 stents in my chest i am now 27 as of july of this year…..so if any of you are having any thoughts this is going on with you go to the hospital asap my artery was 99% CLOSED both times! i never have done drugs, no past heart issues i still dont know why…. i always thought that was only for older people guess i was proven wrong take care ladies
Hi Brittany
Thank you so much for sharing your story, you will have an impact on many young women’s lives. You mentioned that you are still living in fear that you are going to die, fear is debilitating and has the capacity to take over your life. It is hard living in fear. We have a wonderful Life Lesson that can help you, http://lessons.powertochange.com/study/dealinganxiety.html?section=dealinganxiety Thank you again for telling us your story, my prayer is that your heart would be healed so that you can live a life without fear.
so im 15 years old and about a year ago i started feeling really sharp pains in my chest and down to my left arm. the pain to me is unbearable it feel as if theres something sharp going though my chest and it slowly turning,every time i laugh i feel like my heat is stuck and it skipps a beat and when i breath i can feel it pop so i told my mom and she said it was just probably from to much stress.so just to be safe i had a ekg done a few months ago and the results came back negative but the doctor said he wouldnt be to sure about it. i fugured the pain would eventually go away on its own but its been a year i and hasnt gone anywhere and im worried it might be something seriouse, can someone please help me?
Hi Alex,
Unfortunately, we are not a professional medical site. We cannot give you any medical advice but from a women to women perspective, I would encourage your mother to help you get a second opinion. I would also recommend that you talk to your mom again, if you are so stressed and worried about this she should really know. I know that I would want my daughter to tell me if she was.
Also, I have found that prayer helps a lot in times when I feel scared. We have a whole team of people that are really awesome at praying and its totally free and completely confidential. If you would like someone to pray for you, please let me know.