Study: Nearly half of all heart attacks in the U.S. are 'silent'

A new study found that 45 percent of heart attacks in the United States are "silent," with the people having them not experiencing typical symptoms like arm or chest pain.

The damage is the same, and Dr. Elsayed Soliman of Wake Forest Baptist Medial Center, the study's lead author, told NBC News that "because patients don't know they have had a silent heart attack, they may not receive the treatment they need to prevent another one." Heart attacks that go unnoticed can be detected later by electrocardiogram (EKG), and many people that have silent heart attacks wind up going to the hospital with subtle symptoms, like excessive fatigue or indigestion.

The team looked at the medical records of 9,500 middle-aged men and women in a heart disease risk study, and found nine years into the study, 317 participants had silent heart attacks and 386 had heart attacks that were immediately diagnosed. Silent heart attacks need to have aggressive treatment (lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, losing weight, stopping smoking), and people who have them are three times as likely to die of heart disease. The study was published in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

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