Tag: women and heart attacks

The Grinch’s Guide to Women’s Heart Attacks (with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 21 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas     ♥    Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

(with apologies to Dr. Seuss)

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Chest pain!? This can make women worry a lot,

Yet when women seek help, some are told they should not:

“Your tests all look fine!” (No one quite knows the reason).

“You’re probably just feeling stressed by the season!”

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It could be that these tests weren’t researched on them.

(And, really – aren’t women just small little men?)

It could be that Grinch docs think women are lying

Or making up symptoms, without even trying.

Continue reading “The Grinch’s Guide to Women’s Heart Attacks (with apologies to Dr. Seuss)” →

Skin in the game: taking women’s cardiac misdiagnosis seriously

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 23 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas    ♥  Heart Sisters (on Blue Sky)

Our physicians are highly trained experts in providing medical care, but it’s their patients who have “skin in the game”.  This odd phrase is believed to have originated in financial sectors to describe senior investment advisors who demonstrate their confidence in a company by putting their own money (their own “skin”) into the company in order to build investor confidence.  If stock prices fall, they stand to lose – just like their clients will. Advisors who choose not to do this may be every bit as smart, but they have no skin in the game.  Continue reading “Skin in the game: taking women’s cardiac misdiagnosis seriously” →

Finally. An official scientific statement on heart attacks in women.

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 18 Comments

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by Carolyn Thomas   ♥   @HeartSisters

“Sucks to be female. Better luck next life!”

You’re unlikely to spot this succinct summary within the pages of the new official scientific statement on women’s heart attacks from the American Heart Association, but that’s basically the message.(1)  That pithy summary, by the way, was originally quoted here from Laura Haywood-Cory, who at age 40 survived a heart attack caused by Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection.  (See also: Cardiac Gender Bias: We Need Less TALK and More WALK.
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The AHA statement, published in the journal Circulation to a flutter of media interest, basically confirms what I’ve been writing and speaking about for the past eight years: if you’re a woman having a heart attack, you’re more likely to be underdiagnosed – and then undertreated even when appropriately diagnosed – compared to our male counterparts.
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So my question this week (as a woman who was sent home from the ER in mid-heart attack with a misdiagnosis of acid reflux) is this:  if Laura and I and countless other women who’ve survived a heart attack have long ago reported on this “news”, why has it taken 92 years for the American Heart Association to produce its first ever scientific statement on myocardial infarction in female patients?  But don’t get me wrong – I’m always relieved to see any attempt from any major heart organization that helps to spread the word, so I’m running the full AHA news release for you here:  

Continue reading “Finally. An official scientific statement on heart attacks in women.” →

6 reasons women delay seeking medical help – even in mid-heart attack

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 3 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I finally realized that I was in big trouble during a five-hour flight from Ottawa to Vancouver. But I’d been told emphatically by an Emergency Department physician two weeks earlier that my symptoms were just from acid reflux – and had nothing to do with my heart.

So for two weeks, I’d endured increasingly debilitating episodes of chest pain, sweating, nausea and pain radiating down my left arm. But hey! – at least I knew it wasn’t my heart. A man with the letters M.D. after his name had told me so. Continue reading “6 reasons women delay seeking medical help – even in mid-heart attack” →