New Research - Treating women suspected of having a Heart Attack
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[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]