Panic Attacks Look Like Heart Attacks in Women
Manola Blablablanik, who I featured in Heart-to-Heart #13, asked a very important question today.
…have you posted about this before? I’ve read about women going to the ER thinking they are having a heart attack when it was in fact a panic attack. Just curious. :)
The Women’s Heart Foundation has just the answer:
- Heart disease in women is often mistaken for panic attack with shortness of breath, anxiety and indigestion.
- Only by having testing including an EKG can a correct diagnosis be made.
- When in doubt about symptoms, seek care without delay to rule out heart disease.
Learn more about diagnosing heart disease in women. Recommended diagnostic tools for women include a treadmill stress test AND an echocardiogram.
Also visit our sister b5media Science and Health blog - Lively Women.
Technorati Tags: panic attacks, heart attacks, heart, heart disease, womens health, women, disease, health, cardiovascular disease, cvd
Related Stories
POSTED IN: Heart Disease in Women
3 opinions for Panic Attacks Look Like Heart Attacks in Women
HealthCareVox
Jun 28, 2006 at 9:32 am
Healthcare and Blogs Interview Series Part II: Hsien-Hsien Lei, PhD…
Over the next few days I will be publishing several interviews I recently conducted with expert bloggers and communications experts about the impact of blogs on healthcare. My second interview is with Hsien-Hsien Lei, PhD. Dr. Lei writes a …
A Hearty Life » Anxious People Misinterpret Heartbeats
Nov 13, 2006 at 12:01 am
[…] Over at the British Psychological Society, they discuss a recent study that found people with anxiety were less effective at detecting normal vs abnormal heartbeats. Because heart attacks in many people, women in particular, can be mistaken for panic attacks, it’s particularly important to understand how people interpret their own heart rhythms. […]
jessica miller
Feb 29, 2008 at 8:10 am
hi there i was just curious. i am 26 years old with no health problems at all. i have been taking care of my mother who does have health problems. and well yesterday felt like a breaking point for me. after trying to check her blood sugar levels and her running out of strips for her little blood sugar device, i started to freak out. but after a while things were taken care of and i was calm.
and then about an hour later, i started to feel shortness of breath,a nd then my heart started to race, then my chest and heart felt like it had a cramp, and then my entire left arm went numb.
so i end up in the ER for the first time in my life, thinking that i am having a heart attack. but after all the testing and the EKG everything was fine. nothing in my blood, my lungs were perfect. doctor told me that i had a panic attack.
but my question is that, can panic attacks later lead to heart problems? or can a person actually end up having a heart attack? and how do you prevent panic attacks from happening?
Have an opinion? Leave a comment: