Nine unusual signs a woman may be having a heart attack

Heart disease is the number one killer of women.

I’m sure you understand chest pain signals an emergency, but did you know in men it’s a squeezing pain and in women, it may feel more like an abdominal pain — or no pain at all?

Women have more unusual signs of a heart attack than men.

Dr. Bobbi Bogaev Chapman said it might be even more overlooked if you’re in your 30s or 40s.

“There’s an implicit bias among healthcare providers that a young woman shouldn’t be having a heart attack, so they often presume the anxiety is from a panic attack and not anxiety from the inability to breathe due to fluid building up in their lungs when their heart is not working due to a heart attack,” Cardiologist Dr. Chapman explained.

Chapman said she’s had patients with symptoms as minor as indigestion and it meant they were in the middle of a heart attack.

Her advice is to listen to your instincts.

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“Listen to their gut feeling and their gut instinct,” she said. “I’ve never seen it fail a woman.”

Here are 9 unusual symptoms that can indicate the heart is in distress, according to Dr. Chapman:

1. New onset of symptoms that happen during exercise or exertion (like nausea)

2. Chest pain that comes on with exertion and goes away with rest (angina)

3. Extreme fatigue

4. Throat or jaw pain

5. Shortness of breath

6. Indigestion and heartburn

7. Gastrointestinal distress

8. Dizzy or lightheadedness

9. Nausea

Why aren’t these unusual symptoms better understood or more well-known in women?

Chapman says women are underrepresented in clinical trials.

Everyone thinks of chest pain as the main symptom because that’s what studies have told us. However, she says, those studies are mainly made up of men.

Chapman says treatments have changed and improved over the years and she favors a heart implant called Impella CP, as a device to use early in the hospital to help men and women recover faster from heart attacks and return to normal life.

“It’s a device, it’s placed in the femoral artery, it goes up and is placed inside the left ventricle of the heart and takes over the work of the heart while the patient is having a heart attack,” Chapman explained. “It decreases the pressure inside of the heart, improves the blood flow to the heart and blood flow to the rest of the body to allow that heart to rest and recover and it’s used temporarily and removed.”

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She said there has been some hesitation to use the device in women because they have smaller arteries, a decision she disagrees with since she believes use early on in a heart attack is safe and beneficial.

Most hospitals across Houston use the Impella CP, including St. Luke’s (Texas Heart Institute), Memorial Hermann, Houston Methodist, HCA, and the VA Medical Center.