A heart attack, also known as myocardial infarction (MI), is permanent damage to the heart muscle due to a lack of blood supply. More than a million Americans have heart attack every year.
Many believe heart attack can occur only among old folks. In reality, heart disease can start off at an early age and that is why there is a growing number of people have heart attack in their early 30.
It is commonly thought that young women are not to be at risk for heart attacks, but a recent study indicated that heart attacks could be deadliest for young women. Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine and Yale-New Haven Hospital found that not only were young women more likely to be sicker than young men once they arrived at a hospital, they were also more likely to die there.
The researchers used the National Inpatient Sample to compared clinical characteristics, AMI (acute myocardial infarctions) hospitalization rates, length of stay, and in-hospital mortality for patients with AMI across ages between 30 and 54 years, and used survey data analysis techniques to divide them into 5-year subgroups from 2001 to 2010.
It was found that women had longer length of stay and higher in-hospital mortality than men across all age groups. Between 2 and 3 percent of young women aged between 30 and 54 who were hospitalized for a heart attack died over the years from 2001 to 2010, comparing to 1.7 percent to 2 percent of men the same age. The findings were published in the July 14’s issue of ‘Journal of the American College of Cardiology’.
Young women often ignore symptoms, ranging from chest pain and shortness of breath to fatigue and nausea that could suggest a heart attack. While the medical community has focused on educating more women on heart disease, it has not yet customized its message for young women. All of these things could simply lead to a delay in recognizing symptoms, a delayed diagnosis, and a delay in treatment strategies.
1 in 4 American women dies from heart disease. In fact, coronary heart disease, which is the most common type of heart disease, is the top killer of both men and women in the United States.
Prevention is always the best treatment for a serious condition like heart disease. Adopting a healthy diet plus having a regular physical activity can definitely help prevent heart disease. In the meantime, even the healthy people should have, on a regular basis, preventive heart disease screenings such as complete lipid panel screening to detect high cholesterol, C-reactive protein screening, glucose screening and high blood pressure screening.
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