Among U.S. patients seeking emergency room care for heart attacks, those whose symptoms came on gradually and didn’t follow exertion took up to six hours longer to get to the hospital than those with sudden symptoms, according to a new study. The American Heart Association recommends that people experiencing heart attacks seek care within two hours to avoid permanent damage to the heart.
According to researchers, people tend to ignore or discount gradual symptoms. They “don’t describe what they are feeling as pain, just pressure and tightness,” Ashish Jha, a physician and K.T. Li Professor of Global Health at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who was not involved in the study, said in a September 23, 2019 Reuters article. “Doctors must explain that tightness and pressure are just as serious.”
Read the Reuters article: People don’t recognize heart attacks when symptoms come on slowly, researchers say