What Guidera found is thedifference wasn’t related to treat-ment, rather diagnosis. Womenwaited twice as long as men inthe ER before undergoing thetest that confirms a heart attack.As a result of the discovery,Doylestown Hospital and itsheart care center have initiatedboth an in-house and communi-ty awareness campaign empha-sizing the atypical heart attacksymptoms that many womenexperience.Most health care professionalsconsider chest pain the mostobvious heart attack symptom,but among women the mostcommonly reported signs wereunusual fatigue, sleep distur-bance and shortness of breath,according to a recent NationalInstitutes of Health study.Fewer than 30 percent of women reported chest pain ordiscomfort before a heart attack,and 43 percent reported havingno chest pain during any phaseof the attack, according to theNIH study.The study also found thatwomen have more unrecognizedheart attacks than men and theyare more likely to be “mistaken-ly diagnosed and dischargedfrom emergency departments.”Any cardiologist will tell you,time is muscle. The faster youopen a blocked artery, the lessmuscle damage. That means thefaster you can diagnosis a heartattack, the better the patient out-come.Like other hospitals,Doylestown routinely reviewshow long it takes before anartery is unblocked in a patientexperiencing a heart attack, atime frame called door-to-bal-loon. The goal is faster treat-ment.Other area hospitals reportvarious results for door-to-bal-loon times for men versuswomen.St. Mary Medical Center inMiddletown says it isn’t seeingtreatment time differences. AtHoly Redeemer Medical Centerand Hospital in Abington, theaverage response time for womenwas 5 minutes faster than menthis year — 70 minutes versus 75for men.Few national studies havelooked at gender differences indoor-to-balloon times and mostinvolved Medicare patients.Guidera analyzed data for 106patients of various ages whoexperienced heart attack symp-toms in 2008 through this year;he also examined the timing foreach part of the process.What he found is that averagetime for men was 66 minutesfrom the time they entered theemergency department until theartery was unblocked. Forwomen the average was 79 min-utes.Both times are below the 90-minute standard the AmericanCollege of Cardiology recom-mends, but the discrepancy dis-turbed Guidera. The main rea-son for the time difference isthat women waited an average of 8 minutes for an EKG, whilemen waited 4 minutes.“It was a sizable difference,statistically significant,” he said.Especially since, once thediagnosis was made, men andwomen had virtually identicalaverage times in all other phasesof treatment.
TOUGHING IT OUT
Guidera believes the door-to-EKG time discrepancy betweenmen and women reflects a long-standing gender bias in the med-ical community.Simply put, health careproviders don’t take women’ssymptoms as seriously. One rea-son is that often women experi-ence more subtle heart attacksigns.“It’s not due to less concernabout health concerns inwomen,” Guidera said. “It’s dueto a long standing lack of recog-nition of the importance of heartdisease in women.”Women’s symptoms, whichcaninclude nausea, shortness of breath or dizziness, often don’tcause alarm in the triage processto rush the patient to an EKG, hesaid. Sometimes even the patientdoesn’t know she is having a heartattack, so she doesn’t complain.“Women are tougher thanguys,” said John Mitchell, execu-tive director for cardiovascularservices for the Heart Institute of Doylestown Hospital. “They’llcome and sit down in the emer-gency room and not say any-thing.”A few years ago, a woman satin the Doylestown Hospital’s ERfor longer than 10 minutes — therecommended door-to-EKG time— before a nurse asked her if shewas OK. The woman replied thatshe just didn’t feel right.Tests revealed she was havinga heart attack; the woman sur-vived, Mitchell added.As a result of the findings,Doylestown Hospital and its heartcare center are implementing anin-house and community aware-ness campaign designed to ensurethat women experiencing heartattack symptoms get a rapid EKG.Frontline triage nursing staff is undergoing more training andeducation to heighten awarenessof the subtle heart attack symp-toms women can experience,Guidera and Mitchell said. Thehospital launches a communityawareness campaign called“Hear her Heart” in February.The study findings alsoimpressed the American HeartAssociation, which invitedGuidera and his 16- year-olddaughter, Jennifer, who did thestatistical analysis of the data, topresent the study at its annualnational convention inNovember.“Dr. Guidera is really righton the money here,” said Dr.Howard Eisen, chief cardiologistat Drexel University School of Medicine and an AmericanHeart Association board mem-ber.The medical community firstrecognized the symptom differ-ences in women about 20 yearsago, but until recently womenhad consistently worse heartattack outcomes, in part, becauseof the difference in medicalresponse time, Eisen said.About half of women experi-encing heart attacks do not haveclassic chest-pain related symp-toms and, as a result, health careprofessionals do not always treatwomen as aggressively as men,he said. Women not only need tobe more aware of heart attacksymptoms but also need to bemore vocal about them, includ-ing insisting on an EKG.“Everyone needs to be theirown advocate,” Eisen added.“The medical profession needsto be more aware.”
Jo Ciavaglia can be reached at 215-949-4181 or jciavaglia@phillyBurbs.com.
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Heart
Continued from Page A1
WOMEN’S MAJOR SYMPTOMSPRIOR TO A HEART ATTACK INCLUDE:
■
Unusual fatigue
■
Disturbed sleep
■
Shortness of breath
■
Indigestion
■
Anxiety
WOMEN’S MAJOR SYMPTOMSDURING A HEART ATTACK INCLUDE:
■
Shortness of breath
■
Weakness
■
Unusual fatigue
■
Cold sweat
■
Dizziness
ATYPICAL SYMPTOMS WOMENMAY EXPERIENCE DURING AHEART ATTACK:
■
Lower chest discomfort
■
Upper abdominal pressure ordiscomfort that may feel likeindigestion
■
Back pain
CLASSIC CHEST-RELATEDHEART ATTACK SIGNS:
■
Pressure, fullness or asqueezing pain in the center of thechest, which may spread to theneck, shoulder or jaw
■
Chest discomfort withlightheadedness, fainting, sweating,nausea or shortness of breath
Source:National Institutes of Health
RICK KINTZEL /
STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Doylestown Hospital cardiologist
Dr.Steven Guidera, withstatistical help from daughter Jennifer, 16, presented a study thatshowed women wait longer for care after a heart attack because thesigns of an attack are different than those in men.
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