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In distressing scenes on ITV’s Coronation Street, long-runner character Gail Platt had a heart assault and was rushed to hospital – with viewers not understanding if she’s going to survive.
The storyline, by which Platt, performed by Helen Worth, is seen breathless and clutching her left arm earlier than her accomplice Jesse Chadwick calls an ambulance. Worth is due to go away the favored cleaning soap this week after 50 years.
The scene has been welcomed by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), as ‘a fantastic moment to shout about heart health’.
June Davison, a BHF senior cardiac nurse, stresses that opposite to fashionable perception, women who’ve heart attacks expertise the identical key signs as males. “It’s still a misconception that there are differences between female symptoms and male symptoms of a heart attack, but we know now that isn’t the case,” she says.
Here’s what women need to know…
1. Symptoms are the identical in women and males
The most typical heart assault signs, which differ from individual to individual and could also be skilled singly or together, are sudden chest ache or discomfort which will really feel like stress, tightness or squeezing, doesn’t go away, and will unfold to one or each arms, the neck, jaw, again or abdomen.
There may be shortness of breath or issue respiration with or with out chest discomfort; feeling dizzy, light-headed or faint; feeling or being sick or having indigestion; sweating or experiencing a chilly sweat; instantly feeling anxiousness related to a panic assault; coughing or wheezing.
Davison explains: “There’s a group of symptoms, and women and men can experience them equally.”
Indeed, 2019 Edinburgh University analysis, funded by the BHF, dispelled the long-held delusion that women have a tendency to endure uncommon or ‘atypical’ heart assault signs, emphasising the need for each sexes to recognise and act on the warning indicators.
2. Women usually don’t assume they’re in danger
Heart attacks are nonetheless seen by many as a male downside, and consequently, says Davison, one thing that some women assume they don’t actually need to fear about. Yet the BHF says round 33,000 women within the UK are admitted to hospital due to a heart assault every year, and analysis suggests survival charges are decrease for women than for males.
“The issue is that women don’t necessarily see themselves as being at risk of a heart attack, so they’re more likely to delay asking for help or seeking treatment,” Davison explains.
But she warns that, identical to males, if women have danger elements like diabetes, hypertension, excessive ldl cholesterol and/or an unhealthy life-style, comparable to a poor eating regimen or in the event that they smoke, they’re at larger danger of a heart assault.
“For women, the most important thing is to think about the fact that you are not immune to heart disease,” she stresses. “So if the risk factors apply to you, then you’re more likely to experience a heart problem.”
3. Women are extra prone to heart attacks after menopause
During and after menopause, women are at larger danger of getting a heart downside, says Davison, who explains that that is thought to be as a result of oestrogen has a protecting impact on the heart.
“But during and after the menopause, you lose that oestrogen protectiveness, and then your risk of having a heart problem does dramatically increase,” she says. “And coupled with that, around that age, blood pressure is more likely to rise. So that’s a time to be bit more aware, and keep a closer eye on your health – check your blood pressure and cholesterol levels.”
4. Diagnosis could take longer for women
Because women typically delay looking for assist with heart assault signs, their prognosis could take longer, and additional Edinburgh University analysis suggests women obtain poorer heart assault therapy than males.
The BHF says women are 50% extra seemingly than a person to obtain the mistaken preliminary prognosis for a heart assault, and Davison explains that as a result of women could delay looking for assist “they’re going to be slower to get diagnosed”.
And after they do search assist, “They’re more likely to be misdiagnosed, or there’s a delay in sending them for tests, and they’re less likely to receive optimal treatment.
“So we know that women tend to sometimes have worse outcomes than men.”
5. A heart assault won’t be as dramatic as these proven on TV
Platt’s heart assault on Coronation Street doesn’t seem to be as dramatic as others you may need seen on display screen.
Davison stresses: “One thing’s for sure, heart attacks don’t always happen like they do on TV, with somebody dramatically clutching their chest in agony and collapsing onto the floor.
“One of the most common symptoms is chest pain, but it might just be a pressure or a tightness, aching, or heaviness, it’s not necessarily a real agony collapse on the floor. “
She says sometimes people have fairly subtle symptoms, perhaps thinking they’re having a bad episode of indigestion, feeling sick, having a panic attack, or generally feeling very unwell.
“There are a variety of symptoms, and that’s why we say if in doubt, please call 999,” she advises. (*5*)
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