Thousands of women's lives to be saved by heart attack test

[maureenho]

Thousands of women's lives to be saved by heart attack test

By Keith Perry

12:01AM BST 20 May 2014

Test could be available on NHS within months and can detect patients with 'mild' heart attacks before serious damage occurs

Thousands of women’s lives could be saved by a simple test for heart attacks due to be introduced across the NHS within months.

The test could cost as little as £5 a time and works by detecting small increases in levels of protein in the blood released when heart muscle is damaged.

Around 14,000 and 50,000 patients a year are wrongly sent home by doctors having suffered a mild heart attack that has been missed by current testing methods.

Women are more frequently missed than men as they tend to experience symptoms such as abdominal pain, back ache and nausea which can be misdiagnosed as indigestion when they have actually had a mild heart attack.

Once patients have suffered a mild heart attack however they are at high risk of a far more severe one within the next few days or weeks that is often fatal.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/10842637/Thousands-of-womens-lives-to-be-saved-by-heart-attack-test.html

[annie]

go90

[JaneJ]

How worrying that the symptoms are things like back ache. You wouldn't associate that with a heart attack.

tha22222

[annie]

My mum had indigestion for months & didn't worry about it as she had always had what she called "bilious attacks"". Eventually though dad & I persuaded her to see our GP & he said I think it is probably indigestion, but I will send you for an ECG just to make sure, a few days later she collapsed and died - a massive heart attack.

[maureenho]

Annie A similar thing happened to my sister in l.aws sister last month, she just collapsed and died from a massive heart attack.

[Rosalind]

This will be a good thing if it saves lives  tha22222