What are the symptoms of a heart attack?
There are two categories of heart attack symptoms: prodromal and acute. Prodromal symptoms are pre-heart attack symptoms that occur in the weeks and months leading up to a heart attack; acute symptoms are those you experience while you are having a heart attack. The most common pre-heart attack symptoms in women are6-8:
- Unusual fatigue
- Shortness of breath
- Pain in the shoulder blade or upper back
The most common acute symptoms are 9-11:
- Chest pain
- Midback, neck, or jaw pain
- Nausea or vomiting
- Shortness of breath
- Palpitations
- Indigestion
Chest pain is the most common heart attack symptom in men and women. However, a substantial number of people, women in particular, do not experience chest pain during a heart attack. One study of 515 women who had heart attacks found that only about one third felt chest pain in the month before their heart attack, and nearly half of them did not experience it during their heart attack.7
Generally, women are more likely than men to experience the so-called “atypical” heart attack symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, weakness, or fatigue. This might be due to the fact that women simply describe more symptoms in greater detail than men do. Also, “atypical” is a bit of a misnomer because these symptoms are quite prevalent in both men and women.
See Also: Signs & Symptoms
