What are the usual symptoms of a myocardial infarction?
When people talk about a heart attack, they think of severe pain in the heart area, which also radiates to the left side of the body, especially the arm. But this is not the only sign.
When you have a heart attack, you may have:
A feeling of weakness and dizziness;
sweating;
difficulty breathing;
nausea and vomiting;
feelings of anxiety and fear of death up to and including panic attacks.
The classic pain, or anginosis, variant occurs most often, especially in young and middle-aged people, if the attack happened for the first time.
If there is no typical pain, a person does not always realise that it is a heart attack. And in vain.
When a heart attack does not flow as usual
The heart may not hurt – or almost no pain – for various reasons. For example, because after the first heart attack, the heart tissue was replaced by connective tissue and sclerosis developed. Or because nerve transmission is impaired due to concomitant diseases, such as diabetes.
In women more often than in men, the clinical picture is questionable, because in the absence of pain there are other non-obvious signs, such as extreme weakness and fatigue, inability to perform usual activities, shortness of breath and others.
What a myocardial infarction can look like
A heart attack can masquerade as different conditions.
On heartburn, poisoning or acute abdomen
If the heart pain is mild, it can be mistaken for a heartburn attack. This is due to the fact that the heart is not far from the stomach.
As we have already said, in addition to pain during a heart attack there is:
weakness;
nausea;
vomiting.
If they appeared against a background of mild pain in the chest and upper third of the abdomen, then the infarction can be mistaken for poisoning, intestinal infection, exacerbation of pancreatitis or cholecystitis, especially in people with chronic diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. In this case, we speak of a gastralgic, or abdominal, variant.
On the attack of arrhythmia
During a heart attack, the heart rhythm is often disturbed, sometimes to the point of cardiac arrest. The person may feel that:
the heart beats too hard;
there are pauses and interruptions;
there’s weakness to the point of unconsciousness;
a cold sweat.
If the pain is not pronounced, then we can talk about the arrhythmic variant of infarction.
Asthma attack
This form occurs with the development of left ventricular heart failure, when blood circulation is disturbed in the area of the left ventricle, and its area is very large.
Then there appears:
difficulty breathing;
a painful coughing fit with frothy pinkish sputum;
a feeling of shortness of breath;
suffocation.
Such an infarction is called asthmatic.
Stroke
Sometimes a heart attack is accompanied by a severe headache, as if something exploded inside. It can occur after physical activity and decrease after taking medication for angina pectoris.
