Daily Mail, Tuesday, August 27, 2019 Page 45
Silent attack: Pat BurgessP
at Burgess was out
shopping with her
husband, graham, one
afternoon when a sharp
pain made her cry out.
‘I was sitting in the car as the pain shot
up my neck, into my ear and down my
arm,’ says Pat, who lives in Bourneville,
Birmingham. ‘I was terrified, as it was
the worst pain I’d ever experienced.’
It was so intense it was ‘worse than
childbirth’, she says, and fearing it could
be a heart attack, graham drove her to
a&e at one of the city’s hospitals where
she works as a housekeeper.
‘I saw my friends and colleagues,’ she
says. ‘It was so strange being a patient.
I was rushed through and a cardiac
surgeon came to examine me.
‘He wanted to do an eCg to check the
rhythm and activity of my heart, and
an angiogram to check whether the
arteries were narrowed or blocked,’ says
Pat, 53, a mother of three — husband
graham, 57, is a coffee shop manager.
‘the consultant had just started the
eCg, when I began to feel really unwell,’
Pat adds. ‘this terrible pain came again
in my left side. I called out to a nurse
and held her hand — then everything
went black.’ When she came to hours
later, she was in a recovery room.
‘I opened my eyes and a nurse
explained that I’d had a cardiac arrest,
meaning my heart had stopped pump-
ing blood around the body, following a
heart attack in the car,’ says Pat. ‘I
couldn’t take it in. graham was at my
side and looked terrified.’
she’d ‘died’ for a few seconds and had
to be resuscitated.
a cardiac arrest is not the same as a
heart attack, but it can follow one. With
a heart attack, the arteries supplying
the heart muscle with blood become
narrowed by a build-up of fatty depos-
its. If a piece of this fat breaks off, it can
block the artery, causing the heart to be
starved of blood and oxygen.
Prompt treatment is vital, as a delay
can result in a cardiac arrest, where the
heart stops pumping blood round the
body. this robs the brain of oxygen,
leading to the person losing conscious-
ness. Without immediate treatment, it
can be fatal within minutes.T
He consultant said that, in fact,
Pat had suffered not one but two
heart attacks. One while shop-
ping and another ‘silent’ one, atBy JULIE COOK
around 5.30am that day, which she
had thought was indigestion.
Dr Maurice Pye, a consultant
cardiologist at York NHs trust
and Leeds general Infirmary,
explains: ‘With a silent heart
attack, the patient doesn’t have
chest pains, but might feel unwell
or sweaty.’
some people experience indiges-
tion or stomach pain, because the
nerve supply to the upper gastro-
intestinal system and the heart
are closely related and so pain in
one can be felt in the other.
Often, it’s only when a scan —
carried out for another reason —
shows up an inadequate blood or
oxygen supply to parts of the
heart, that doctors realise a silent
heart attack has occurred.
Pat had suffered months of
stomach pain, but had thoughtsomething e l s e w a s
causing it. In 2016, she
had been diagnosed with
a hiatus hernia — where
part of the stomach protrudes
into the diaphragm,
causing symptoms such as
heartburn, stomach pain,
and shortness of breath. ‘I
just thought the stomach
pain I often felt was related to
that. so I ignored it,’ she says.
‘I was so shocked to learn it was
related to my heart. I’d been going
to work, acting normally when I’d
actually had a heart attack, but
just didn’t know it.’
In Pat’s case, the pain she would
normally have felt in her chest was
felt in her stomach, masking the
pain of the heart attack. However,
their silent nature doesn’t meanthese
heart
attacks aren’t
serious. In fact, a silent
heart attack is just as dan-
gerous, despite the lack of pain.
‘they can cause the same
level of damage and, if you’ve
had a silent heart attack, you
are more likely to have a stand-
ard heart attack,’ says Dr Pye.
silent heart attacks are more
common in women. It isn’t certain
why, but it could be due to them
having a higher pain threshold
and so disregarding chest pains.
as well as being more common
in women, they also occur in those
with diabetes and older people.
‘In type 1 and type 2 diabetes,
patients get what we sometimes
call autonomic neuropathystomach pain or heartburn, if
symptoms rapidly clear up after
using antacids, ‘they are almost
certainly not cardiac’.
If the ‘indigestion’ pain at rest is
not relieved within half an hour of
taking Zantac (ranitidine) or
gaviscon, then the patient should
‘call 999 immediately and order a
paramedic ambulance for a sus-
pected heart attack’, he advises.
this message is really important.
If the pain is intermittent and
unrelieved by the antacids, then
you should go straight to hospital.
For Pat, her heart diagnosis had
come just in time.S
CaNs picked up a perma-
nent ‘dead’ area at the
back of her heart, a result
of her heart attacks.
the consultant explained that
Pat had a total blockage in her left
coronary artery — one of the two
main blood vessels that take
oxygen-rich blood to the heart —
and a smaller one lower down in
the same artery, putting her at
risk of further heart attacks.
she was taken to theatre where
two stents were inserted in the
blood vessels to remove the clot
and open up the arteries. three
days later, Pat was allowed home.
‘I was put on seven pills a day,’
she says. ‘Beta blockers to make
my heart beat slower and reduce
my blood pressure, and anti-
platelet drugs that stop the blood
being sticky and make it less likely
to clot.’
Pat is now all too aware of heart
attack symptoms and believes
many more women might not real-
ise they are at risk. she believes
that, because family members —
her mother and paternal uncle —
have died of heart problems, she
has always been at a higher risk.
Now, three years on, Pat is well
and has been discharged from her
consultant. she has had no heart
problems since, although still
takes pills for it. and while she is
still on medication for her hiatus
hernia, the stomach pains have
completely stopped.
‘With heart attacks, women have
different symptoms — some feel a
pain in their stomach, others in
their shoulders,’ says Pat. ‘there’s
no one specific symptom.
‘I want to raise awareness,
because I don’t think women’s
heart health is taken seriously. I
thought I just had indigestion
but could have died. I am so lucky
to be here.’
n bhf.org.ukThis week: We have stopped getting taller
IN THE West, humans have shot up by
around 4in (10cm) in the last 150 years.
A study by Imperial College London
published in 2016 found British men
had grown from an average 5ft 6in in
1914 to 5ft 10in by 2014. Women grew even
more, from just 5ft a century ago to an
average 5ft 5in today.
This is thought to be largely due to
improved nutrition and healthcare
encouraging growth. That’s why averageheights reduced slightly after the World Wars
when food was scarce, and recovered
when rationing ended.
Genes also play a part: if a child is born
to tall parents, they will almost
certainly grow to a similar height.
However, a review of 160 studies in
2017, in the journal Frontiers In Physiol-
ogy, found that in recent years average
heights in high income countries have
plateaued, most likely because the human
body has reached its functional limit.CHANGING TRAITS
How our bodies have
changed over time
ingenious cutlery for those
who struggle at mealtimes.
This week: gyenno spoon,
£210, amazon.co.uk
CLAIM: This spoon helps
‘people with hand tremor eat
without stress’.
You slot a spoon into the
handle, which has software
to cancel out the movement
of the hand shaking by mov-
ing the spoon’s bowl down as
the hand moves up. The sensorcan distinguish between a delib-
erate movement and a tremor.
EXPERT VERDICT: ‘The spoon is
about the weight of a smart-
phone, so that will help dampen
shakes,’ says Ana Aragon, an
occupational therapist and a
consultant for Parkinson’s UK.
‘It’s expensive and wouldn’t
suit someone with a weak grip.
It also directs food to the mouth
straight on — in Western society,
we eat from a 45-degree angle.’SPOONFUL OF MEDICINE
women’s
higher threshold for
Why
PAIN
KILLER
can
be a
Pictures: GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO/PAUL TONGE[where, over time, uncontrolled
blood sugar levels damage
the nerves in the chest] causing a
lack of sensation there and pre-
venting the pain of a heart attack
from being felt,’ says Dr Pye.
Julie Ward, senior cardiac nurse
at the British Heart Foundation,
adds: ‘symptoms can vary from
one person to another. typically,
they include pain or discomfort in
the chest that doesn’t go away; it
may spread to the arms, neck, jaw,
back or stomach. You may also
feel light-headed, dizzy; be short
of breath, nauseous or vomit.
‘Different pain thresholds may
well be a reason for some people
not noticing the symptoms of a
heart attack.’
Dr Pye stresses that, while
patients should not dismissV1