Category: Diagnosing – and misdiagnosing

– posts here focus on how difficult it often is to get an accurate heart disease diagnosis in women

When your “significant EKG changes” are missed

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 25 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

A new cardiac study out of Montréal tells us yet again what women heart patients have already known for years: women receive poorer care during a heart attack than our male counterparts do. Quelle surprise . . .  But one specific finding caught my eye: one of the cardiac procedures that these researchers compared in this study was the use of the diagnostic electrocardiogram test (ECG or EKG) in male and female heart attack patients.(1)

They found that women were less likely than men to receive an electrocardiogram within the recommended 10 minutes of arriving in hospital with suspected cardiac symptoms.

It turns out, however, that even when we do finally get hooked up to a 12-lead EKG in a hospital’s Emergency Department, the doctors there may not be able to correctly interpret the “significant EKG changes” that identify heart disease. Continue reading “When your “significant EKG changes” are missed” →

Cardiac gender bias: we need less TALK and more WALK

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

News flash! Yet another new cardiac study from yet another group of respected Montréal researchers has been published in yet another medical journal suggesting that (…wait for it!) women receive poorer care during a heart attack compared to our male counterparts.(1)

As my irreverent Mayo Clinic heart sister Laura Haywood-Cory (who survived a heart attack at age 40 caused by Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection) once observed in response to a 2011 Heart Sisters post:

“We really don’t need yet another study that basically comes down to: ‘Sucks to be female. Better luck next life!’, do we?”

Well, Laura – apparently we do.  Because those studies just keep on coming.         . Continue reading “Cardiac gender bias: we need less TALK and more WALK” →

Stress test vs flipping a coin: which is more accurate?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 97 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

You may not have any signs or symptoms of coronary artery disease while you are just sitting there quietly reading this post. In fact, your symptoms may occur only during exertion, as narrowed arteries struggle to carry enough blood to feed a heart muscle that’s screaming for oxygen under increased demand. Enter the diagnostic stress test, used to mimic the cardiac effects of exercise to assess your risk of coronary artery disease.

During stress testing, you exercise (walk/run on a treadmill or pedal a stationary bike) to make your heart work harder and beat faster.  An EKG (also called ECG) is recorded while you exercise to monitor any abnormal changes in your heart under stress, with or without the aid of medications to enhance this effect.

But consider this blunt warning from Dr. Kevin Klauer:   Continue reading “Stress test vs flipping a coin: which is more accurate?” →

Why we ignore serious symptoms

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 13 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas   ♥  @HeartSisters

Before my heart attack, I spent almost two decades as a distance runner. Many of the elite marathoners I knew (and certainly the one I happened to live with!) obsessed mercilessly on every detail of their last race, but not so much on the daily joys of running itself. It was the destination and not the journey that seemed to matter to so many of them, especially during race season.

The members of my own running group could never be accused of being elite runners. Our motto was: “No course too short, no pace too slow.”  But over those decades, whenever my group was in training for a specific road race looming on the calendar, I could watch myself being sucked into that seductive groupthink trap of running even when I was sick, running when I was injured, running because it’s Tuesday and Tuesdays meant hill work, running with an ankle or knee taped and hurting.

Getting to a more important destination (the race) became bigger than paying attention to those less important messages (don’t run today). In fact, I learned from other runners to deliberately mistrust whatever my lazy-ass self was trying to say.  I learned to ignore the messages my own body was sending me. Continue reading “Why we ignore serious symptoms” →