Almost half of all heart attacks are ‘silent’

Professor Jeremy Pearson, Associate Medical Director at the British Heart Foundation, said: ‘This study emphasises that individuals who have ECG (scan) results which suggest a heart attack, but who don’t have any classical symptoms, should be investigated more fully to determine their need for future treatment. “There is a significant mortality associated with silent heart attacks“, says Ryan. The researchers also continued to look at data for another two decades to gather information on rates of death.

Almost 50% of the heart attacks that take place are silent but deadly killers.

Although doctors are aware of the existence of silent heart attacks, less is known about demographic differences, such as ethnicity and gender.

Steinbaum, who was not involved with the study, said that people should not dismiss symptoms such as fatigue, nausea or shortness of breath that occur when exercising or running errands but that go away when resting.

Patients who have suffered a silent heart attack should be treated as if they had suffered the usual symptoms, according to Dr Soliman. By the fourth follow-up visit, 386 of the participants had had a classic heart attack. “Make sure your blood pressure is at a healthy level, lower your cholesterol, and make dietary and lifestyle choices that lead to a healthy heart”.

Soliman’s team looked at the medical records of 9,500 middle-aged men and women taking part in a heart disease risk study.

Researchers said that their study is more inclusive than most studies, but since the comparison studies they used have small sample sizes, the findings reflect only the incidence of heart attacks and not disease prognosis.

Black Americans are worse than whites when it comes to missing silent heart attacks.

Other studies have also found women are more likely to have silent heart attacks than men, noted Dr. Leslie Cho, head of preventive cardiology at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.

The report was published online May 16 in the journal Circulation.

Symptoms of silent heart attacks appear so mild that they are barely noticed, if at all.

Although these heart attacks do not exhibit symptoms, that does not mean they do no damage.

Even without the traditional symptoms, blood flowing to the heart is reduced or choked off completely during a silent cardio infarction.

In 1987, the ARIC Study began enrolling participants who were free of heart disease in four US communities in Maryland, Minnesota, Mississippi and North Carolina to determine the risk factors for heart disease and health effects of hardening of the arteries over time.

“People who have these so-called silent heart attacks are more likely to have non-specific and subtle symptoms, such as indigestion or a case of the flu, or they may think that they strained a muscle in their chest or their upper back”, said Dr. Deborah Ekery, a cardiologist at Heart Hospital of Austin.

Heart disease is the No. 1 killer in the United States. In addition, black women were found to be at the highest risk of death.

This is not the first study to suggest that silent heart attacks are almost as common as heart attacks with symptoms. ARIC’s initial aim was to investigate risk factors for heart disease and the health effects of hardening arteries (atherosclerosis).

Researchers accounted for many factors that could bias results, including smoking, body weight, diabetes, high blood pressure and cholesterol.