Tag: spontaneous coronary artery dissection

Misdiagnosis: the perils of “unwarranted certainty”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 9 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Until being misdiagnosed with indigestion in mid-heart attack, I generally trusted that all people with the letters M.D. after their names knew what they were talking about when diagnosing serious medical problems. That was long before I tracked down a study(1) reported in the New England Journal of Medicine that women under the age of 55 who are experiencing a heart attack are seven times more likely to be misdiagnosed and sent home from the E.R. compared to their male counterparts presenting with identical symptoms.

And that’s why I now find Dr. Jerome Groopman’s landmark book, How Doctors Think, so illuminating.  It should be required reading for all med school students.  Continue reading “Misdiagnosis: the perils of “unwarranted certainty”” →

“All the SCAD ladies, put your hands up!”

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

Heart attack survivor Laura Haywood-Cory, one of my heart sisters and a fellow “graduate” of the WomenHeart Science & Leadership Symposium at Mayo Clinic, emailed me with great excitement last week:

“The Wall Street Journal interview with Katherine, me and Dr. Hayes is now live!!”

This WSJ piece tells the inspiring story of how heart attack survivor  Katherine Leon, with Laura’s help, convinced a world-famous hospital to launch research on the rare and deadly heart condition they had each survived: spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD.

(See also: How I Used to Describe SCAD. And what I’ve Learned Since (2021)

Continue reading ““All the SCAD ladies, put your hands up!”” →

TV reporter Jennifer Donelan survives heart attack at age 36

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

Television news reporter Jennifer Donelan was just 36 years old when she had a heart attack near the end of a busy day at work last September. Five months after surviving this horrific cardiac event, she’s now back at ABC 7 News in Washington, DC, where she hosted a three-part Heart Month series on women living with heart disease. She explained:  Continue reading “TV reporter Jennifer Donelan survives heart attack at age 36” →

When your artery tears – Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 29 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

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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 seen as a deadly condition that was only correctly diagnosed post-mortem.  In fact, the condition was first identified during an autopsy in 1931 after a woman in her 40s had died during a SCAD heart attack. Continue reading “When your artery tears – Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection” →