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Silent heart attacks are as dangerous as the “classical” ones
STATES CHRONICLE – The findings of a new study warn us to beware of the silent heart attacks.
A study published Monday in the American Heart Association (journal circulation) called “Race and Sex Differences in the Incidence and Prognostic Significance of Silent Myocardial Infarction (…)” indicates that as much as half of all heart attacks are silent.
Silent heart attacks (SHA) are as dangerous and powerful as the ones that give the “classical” heavy chest pain, shortness of breath and sudden cold sweats signs. They do as much harm as the most “noisy” myocardial infarcts.
A silent heart attack is when you have a heart attack, but you do not get the obvious symptoms. What happens in one of these unwanted health situations is blood being reduced, severely reduced or entirely cut out from the heart’s muscle.
Analyzing the records of 9,498 adults enrolled in another study called the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities, a study that investigates the causes and outcome of atherosclerosis, researchers examined heart attack differences between gender and race.
The study followed up on the participants for a period as long as twenty years. A number of 317 participants had heart attacks with no symptoms, and 386 of them had the infarcts with clinical symptoms.
This result shows silent heart attacks make 45 percent of all heart attacks.
It appears that women with SHA outnumber men, and African American men outnumber Caucasian men.
Researchers took into account many factors to prevent biasing the results, like body weight, diabetes, high blood pressure, smoking and a few other, including income and education.
Silent heart attacks are detected when patients undergo ECGs or EKGs (electrocardiogram) to check their hearts. This usually happens when the patient does a routine check or needs the heart’s electrical activity evaluation for something else.
Heart attacks that come with no symptoms and are later detected should be treated with the same intensive care as are the ones triggered by clinical symptoms.
The risk factors seem to be the same for both types of infarcts. Doctors are encouraged to advise patients to quit smoking, lose weight, watch their cholesterol levels and blood pressure, and exercise.
A recently published study also linked exercising with the risk reduction for thirteen types of cancer.
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