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Laura, a 40-year old American heart attack survivor, told me this story of her own cardiac event:
“I was asleep and my symptoms woke me up. I had several simultaneous symptoms, but the first one seemed to be chest pain in the centre-left, somewhat under my left breast area. I’d never felt anything like it, so sometimes it’s hard to describe – it wasn’t sharp or crushing or burning, more like a dull pressure. I also had pain down the inside of my left arm that radiated up into the left side of my jaw and my left ear.
“I was very overheated, and I felt like I was going to throw up. The nausea and overheating faded, but the pain – chest, arm, jaw – stayed. In hospital, I was diagnosed with a heart attack caused by SCAD – spontaneous coronary artery dissection, treated with six stents.”
It used to be, and sadly remains in almost 70% of cases, a deadly condition often only correctly identified post-mortem during autopsy.
This brief animation shows what happens during Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection – literally a tear in the wall of a coronary artery, or SCAD as we heart sisters know it.
In women, it’s usually the Left Anterior Descending coronary artery involved; in men, it’s typically the Right Main. The tear can either be ‘primary’, occurring spontaneously out of the blue, or ‘secondary’ as a consequence of undergoing coronary angiography, coronary intervention, cardiac surgery or chest trauma.
I like Laura’s simple yet comprehensive explanation of how SCAD usually happens:
“It’s like when the lining of your favorite coat tears, up near the shoulder, and you accidentally put your arm through the space between the torn lining and the outer layer of fabric, but since the sleeve and lining are still sewn together at the wrist, your arm can’t actually come out where it should, at the end of the sleeve.
“Your trapped arm is like the blood in a dissected coronary artery that can’t get to its destination”
Up to 80% of SCAD cases occur in young healthy women like Laura. According to a September 2010 study published online in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology:
“Patients diagnosed with SCAD are characterized by an absence of coronary risk factors, an association with physical or emotional stress, and a high incidence of infarction (heart attack)” .
Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection (SCAD) that caused Laura’s heart attack is sometimes referred to as “rare”, but Mayo Clinic cardiologist Dr. Sharonne Hayes now describes this condition as “underdiagnosed” or “infrequent”, especially when discussing heart attacks in younger women. (Mayo Clinic recently saw three SCAD cases in one day, one acute and two as outpatient consultations).
♥ Have you been diagnosed with Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection? Find out if you are eligible to participate in two new SCAD studies at Mayo Clinic.
♥ Learn more:
- What is SCAD? written by Mayo Clinic cardiologist Dr. Sharonne Hayes
- TV News Reporter Jennifer Donelan Survives Heart Attack at Age 36
- in this Wall Street Journal article called “When Patients Band Together: Social Media Spurs Mayo Clinic Research”
- on this website launched by a SCAD survivor
- in this very comprehensive article from the Netherlands Heart Journal
- Read SCAD Ladies Stand Up: Stories of Patient Empowerment, the special report from Inspire.com and the WomenHeart online support community. It features a number of interesting first-person accounts from SCAD survivors plus an introduction written by cardiologist Dr. Sharonne Hayes called “Traditional Research Methods Turned Upside Down: The Untapped Potential of ‘Patient- Initiated’ Research in the Study of Rare Diseases“ (plus even a link to a Heart Sisters article about SCAD listed on the report’s resource page!)
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♥ This article ranked #8 on the Top 10 Most Popular Posts here on Heart Sisters for 2011.
i was diagnosed with scad one month ago after having a heart attack and feel lucky and scared
Hello Annette and welcome to the very exclusive club that nobody ever wants to join. You are in very early days yet so no wonder you are feeling conflicting emotions. If you haven’t done so already, please visit the WomenHeart online community of SCAD patients – it’s free to become a member and you’ll find many other women just like you there.
My 14 year old daughter suffered a heart attack on March 20, 2012 that was caused by SCAD. I’m from a big city and the doctors had never heard of this happening to a young child. I’m trying to gain enough information about SCAD for my daughter. I thank GOD that he saved my daughter and you as well. I really enjoyed this website.
Lashalle, what a nightmare! And at such a young age – no wonder your doctors had never encountered a case like this. I hope your daughter is doing much better day by day as you and your family try to make sense out of a diagnosis that makes no sense to us! Good luck to all of you.
Thanks again to my heart-sister Carolyn for covering this story.
I cringed when another friend referred to my “15 minutes of fame.” I quickly corrected her. This isn’t *my*15 minutes of fame, it’s SCAD’s 15 minutes of fame.
For every woman out there who’s scared, newly diagnosed, just out of the hospital, and told that what happened to her was rare and we don’t know anything about it, all of this publicity and research is hopefully leading toward the point sometime in the future where cardiologists won’t shrug and say “We have no idea” when confronted with a SCAD.
There’s a vibrant, active group of us SCAD survivors on WomenHeart’s online message forum, here; please join us.
For as we’ve seen, when we come together for a common goal, we can do it!
Thanks Laura for this link to the WomenHeart forum. I think the specific topic you started there about SCAD, however, is an absolute goldmine for SCAD survivors and their physicians.
In fact, after hearing about SCAD experiences for the past few years from you and other survivors, I was almost surprised to learn how “rare” the diagnosis is considered. It may well be rare to physicians who rarely recognize it when (young, healthy) women show up in the E.R., but to those of us who share stories with other heart patients every day like this, we can feel like it’s tragically common.
Your efforts with Katherine to spur this Mayo Clinic SCAD research is such a great example of what women can do when they put their mind to it.
I hope every single SCAD survivor will contact Mayo to participate in this study.
Cheers,
C.
I’d barely heard of SCAD until I read about it here – and yet this week it seems I’ve heard the Mayo Clinic SCAD research project talked about everywhere! It’s about time that more attention and awareness was raised about this deadly and predominantly female diagnosis. Thank you very much for this.
Just found this article while trying to learn more of the new Mayo Clinic research on SCAD. This is such an impressive website for women heart patients (and men, too!!!) I can’t believe how much really good stuff you have here, told as only an actual heart attack survivor can tell it. Easy to read, well-written, evidence references, just great stuff! Please keep up the good work – I’m a brand new subscriber now.
Lisee in Montreal
Nobody in our whole family had ever even heard of this condition until my twin sister age 42 was hospitalized for a heart attack caused by SCAD. Our mid-sized hospital had never actually seen this in a living patient – usually diagnosed on autopsy, they said. She is very lucky to have survived, as I’m learning from your wonderful website and the very few other resources that even mention SCAD.
THANK YOU THANK YOU for this and for the link to the SCAD website.
With gratitude,
Kim
My sister is in hospital right now after a heart attack diagnosed with SCAD. Your post here is perfect timing. Our whole family is reeling from this she is only 35 too young for heart attack. Thx VERY MUCH for this.
Best wishes for your sister’s full recovery. I wish you all much strength and courage.
I experienced SCAD three years ago (45). SOOO scary! The LAD artery continued to dissect, so I had three “events” in the stretch of a little over a week…I now have 7 stents.
I wasn’t feeling very powerful after that, but the thing that made me feel powerful was to learn all I could about this. I feel so fortunate that I have been given a second “birthday” to celebrate!
Stay strong!