Today is “National Wear Red Day,” a day in which women around the country wear something red, whether in the form of a lapel pin, clothing item, or even a certain shade of lipstick, in an effort to increase awareness about the risk of heart disease and heart attack in women.
The color red unfortunately clashes with my skin tone, so in lieu of wearing something rosy to commemorate the day I spoke with a few of my patients about heart disease instead. One of them, a woman in her 70s, relayed her story to me as I worked on her recently replaced knee. She had been diagnosed with gastric reflux in the past and had obediently taken the appropriate medications and elevated the head of her bed to no avail. There was no family history of heart disease, and she monitored her blood pressure regularly. Then, one day she noticed that her reflux pain had somehow moved into both arms, causing a weird ache that spread down to just above the elbows. Perplexed, she decided to check in with her doctor right away.
Although my patient’s ECG was normal her cardiac enzymes had soared off the charts, so she was rushed into the ER where she was diagnosed with an acute MI that required an angioplasty to remove a blood clot from one of her coronary arteries.
For reasons not fully understood, women are more likely to have a heart attack that results in death than men. One reason may be that women and men seem to experience cardiac symptoms differently — a study in Circulation revealed that up to one month before an acute MI, most women experience unusual fatigue, sleep disturbances, shortness of breath, indigestion, or anxiety. Less than 30% of the women studied reported chest pain — the instantly recognizable symptom of cardiac distress typically found in men.
A recent press release from the American Heart Association reported that although emergency medical personnel respond with equal speed to women and men who call 911, women are 52% more likely than men to be delayed en route to the hospital when experiencing an acute MI, perhaps due to the difficulty in troubleshooting and recognizing cardiac symptoms.
If you haven’t talked to your patients yet about heart disease, do it today — we’re all at risk.
Anne Ahlman, MPT
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