New Research - Treating women suspected of having a Heart Attack

[BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION] [IMPROVING HEART ATTACK DIAGNOSIS] [JENNIFER, HEART ATTACK PATIENT] The pain would dissipate out over my arms and up my neck would last anywhere from five to ten minutes. And then it would just go away, and because it was such a short thing, I didn't really think anything of it to start with, but the episodes started to happen more often. At that point I thought, hm, this isn't quite right. And on Tuesday I got up, went into my work, and as I was walking into work, it happened again. This time it was much stronger. All I remember is walking into work and one of my colleagues saying to me, "Jenny, are you okay?" [DR. NICK MILLS] A heart attack occurs when one of the blood vessels to the heart are blocked by a clot, and during that period, the heart muscle dies. It usually presents with chest pain or numbness in the arm and breathlessness. And one of the big challenges for us is to improve the way in which we can detect a heart attack and diagnose heart attacks. [DR. ANOOP SHAH] Of all patients coming in with symptoms suggestive of a heart attack, about one in four men get diagnosed with a heart attack, but in women, it's about one in eight. It probably means that we're probably not identifying these women because our current diagnostic approaches are probably not as good for women compared to men. When someone presents to the hospital with chest pains, suspect of a heart attack, the first test we perform is an electrical test of the heart, or an ECG. We arrange blood tests to try and confirm or refute the diagnosis of a heart attack. Our research is funded by the British Heart Foundation. It's primarily involved in improving the diagnosis of heart attacks in both men and women. And what we are looking at is a protein that is released from the heart muscle that is measured in the blood stream where the heart is injured. The new test is slightly different from the old test because of improved sensitivity. We can now detect this protein in the blood stream at much smaller quantity levels, so we can know that the heart is injured at much earlier time point. And even if there is a very small injury to the heart, we can pick that out. So in terms of its threshold, the test for women is generally two-fold lower compared to men. Identification of women having a heart attack has essentially doubled. I'm sitting here healthy today because of the new research by the British Heart Foundation. The bottom line is those new tests meant that the sensitivity levels were lower for diagnosis. And they found out that I had a problem and I was treated. And for that reason, I'm sitting here a healthy person today. So I'm very grateful. This is the first research really to demonstrate that we need to think differently about men and women. And I believe that using these high sensitive troponin tests and different criteria for men and women, we will more accurately diagnose heart attacks, and more importantly, get treatment to those who benefit most. [BRITISH HEART FOUNDATION]