Chest Pain is Unreliable Sign of Heart Attack for Women

Research says that doctors cannot use chest pain as a symptom to accurately diagnose a woman suffering from a major heart attack.

In a survey about 800 women and 1700 men it was found that women suffer the same types of chest pain as men during a heart attack. But most of these chest pain symptoms that were reported by women could not be used to accurately point towards a heart attack. The study further said that doctors should be using tests to diagnose a heart attack.

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City said, "Doctors must be much more aggressive in trying to diagnose heart disease through EKG and troponins, because without those objective data it's very hard to tell it's a woman's heart. The symptoms aren't going to tell us. We have to use the diagnostic tools we have.”

Some physicians however had expressed their concern that these findings would prompt women to ignore chest pains when they experience one, and that they would not go to the hospital for a checkup. But the fact of the matter is that everyone should take their chest pain very seriously.

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