What is a heart attack? Heart attack is the death of a segment of the heart due to a blockage in the coronary arteries by a blood clot. Coronary arteries are blood vessels that supply the heart with nutrients and oxygen. Heart attack takes about 8-hours to be complete. During a heart attack symptoms just last for about 30 minutes.
Heart attack can be diagnosed when there’s a severe chest pain and tests such as the cardiac enzyme test, electrocardiograph, and chest x-ray will be conducted. If there isn’t chest pain necessarily tests won’t be done because heart attack isn’t suspected.
Some symptoms of heart attack are coughing, vomiting, dizziness, and nausea which is a feeling of sickness and an urge to vomit. Most common symptoms for a heart attack are chest pain and angina which is sometimes referred to discomfort, heaviness, aching, and burning. Angina is mostly felt in the chest, but can also be felt in the shoulders, arms, and neck.
Some heart attacks come without any symptoms which are called myocardial infraction which occurs mostly with people that are diabetic.
Heart attacks occur primarily in men. In women it takes more time to diagnose a heart attack than in men, because of two things. First in some parts of the world women don’t receive medical attention like men. Second women’s heart attack symptoms are different than those of men and are harder to diagnose. Some heart attack symptoms in women abdominal pain, neck pain, fatigue which is tiredness, women have more occurrence of chest pain than men so they don’t recognize it as a heart attack symptom. When women do the electrocardiograph test it doesn’t always show wither they have a heart attack or not. Women have more chances of having myocardial infraction.
This unusual symptoms and difficulties in diagnosing heart attacks in women make women less likely to admit to a coronary care unit which is a hospitals specialized in the care of patients with heart
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