The facts: Let's say you've done some late-night (possibly paranoid) Web surfing and have read up on heart attack symptoms. For women, you think the signs to look for are: shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting and pain in the back, neck or jaw. For men: a classic elephant-on-the-chest feeling. But in one recent study of nearly 2,500 women and men who were being evaluated for a possible heart attack, European researchers asked patients to describe their symptoms and then carefully analyzed the responses. Surprisingly, they found little statistical difference in the answers:
Chest pain was fairly standard among all patients—and the other symptoms were relatively common, too.
Too much has been made about gender differences, they concluded in the journal
JAMA Internal Medicine. Save for one: Women are more likely to die from a heart attack. So if you're really
not feeling right, or if the thought of a heart attack even crosses your mind (doctors say female patients will often consider that they're having one and then do nothing more than take an aspirin), call your doctor or 911, stat.
