Heart attack symptoms in women: how to spot the signs

Smoking, high blood pressure and diabetes increase the odds of suffering a heart attack more for women than for men, new research has found.

Coronary heart disease is is the most common cause of death before the age of 65, killing 160,000 people in the UK every year, according to the charity Heart UK. Overall, men are at greater risk of heart attack than women.

However, a newly published study in the BMJ has found that certain risk factors have a greater impact on women. The researchers, from Oxford University, looked at data on almost half a million middle-aged people from across the UK with no previous history of cardiovascular disease.

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Over a seven-year period, 5,081 of these people had their first heart attack, of whom 29% were women. But the study found that smoking increased a woman’s risk of a heart attack by an extra 55% relative to its effect in a man, while high blood pressure increased a woman’s risk by an extra 83%, says The Daily Telegraph.

Type II diabetes, usually associated with poor diet and other lifestyle factors, had a 47% greater impact on the risk for woman, while type I diabetes had an almost three times greater impact.

“Cardiovascular disease is the biggest killer of women but so many don’t realise,” said study leader Dr Elizabeth Millet.

“Women should, at least, receive the same access to guideline-based treatments for diabetes and hypertension, and to resources to help lose weight and stop smoking as do men.”

Unless people begin to improve their lifestyles, the gap in heart attack rates between men and women will close, the researchers warn.

Cardiac arrest can present differently in men and women. Common symptoms for women suffering a heart attack include shortness of breath, pressure or pain in the lower chest, lightheadedness, cold sweat, dizziness and nausea. Pain in the arm can also be sign, but many women also experience pain in areas not commonly associated with cardiac problems, including the back, shoulder, neck, jaw or stomach.

“It is possible to have a heart attack without experiencing ‘classic’ chest pain. This is more common in the elderly, women, or those with diabetes as the condition can cause nerve damage which can affect how you feel pain,” says the British Heart Foundation.

Earlier this year, a US study found that women were more likely to die of a heart attack if they were treated by a male doctor. Researchers suggested that this was because female-specific symptoms can go unnoticed, possibly with heart attacks traditionally regarded as a “male” disease in the medical research community.