Have you ever had a heart attack?
What if you didn’t even know you had one?
That should be impossible, according to movies and TV shows. Once you get a heart attack, you know. You keel over and someone around you notices, and you struggle for breath.
Actually, it’s not that simple.
New research shows that many Americans suffer what are called “silent” heart attacks.
These heart attacks go unnoticed, but they’re still serious enough that they scar the heart tissue.
The study was done on over 1,800 people between the ages of 45 and 84, across various ethnic groups. All did not have heart disease. Ten years later, imaging scans were done, and nearly 8 percent of these participants were found to have scare caused by a heart attack. 78 percent of these were from undetected heart attacks.
Women had these scars much more often than men did. Smokers, overweight people, high blood pressure medications, and calcium deposits in arteries were also big risk factors for these heart scars.
70 percent of those who die from heart complications show previous heart scarring, so this may be a wake-up call for patients who are at risk. Lifestyle change for those with lifestyle-related risk factors is now more important than ever.
Dr. Stacy Rosen, VP of women’s health at the Katz Institute for Women’s Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y., said, “We know that the risk factors for heart disease—the number one killer of American men and women—are predominantly modifiable, so this finding gives further support to the notion that early identification and management of these risks is critical.”
