Symptoms of a silent heart attack
A silent heart attack is not accompanied by the classic symptoms that normally characterize the clinical picture. Silent infarctions are particularly common in long-term diabetics. These patients usually have a chronic polyneuropathy, a steadily progressing loss of nerves.
As a result of this loss, the patients feel less pain and can no longer perceive stimuli of the vegetative (involuntary, physical) nervous system well. The leading symptom chest pain is then missing and the diagnosis is enormously complicated.In the case of a silent infarction, other symptoms – such as nausea, vomiting or dizziness – are often in the foreground, misleading both the treating physicians and the patients. Thus, a heart attack can be misinterpreted as a simple infection, which can have fatal consequences under certain circumstances. In addition to diabetics, women, older people in general, patients who have undergone heart surgery or kidney disease are at increased risk of suffering a silent heart attack with few or no symptoms. An ECG should therefore be taken regularly, even if the symptoms do not directly suggest a heart attack.
What are the symptoms in young people?
Basically, heart attack is a disease of middle and high age. From the age of 45, the risk increases steadily until it reaches its peak at around 60 years of age. However, young people can also suffer a heart attack.
Usually this does not happen without further ado, but rather through genetic risk factors, heart defects existing since birth or a massive malnutrition with accompanying overweight in young years. The symptoms are no different in young patients than in older ones. Young people have a greater chance of being diagnosed quickly because the nervous system is even more sensitive to changes and recognizes pain stimuli – not as in older patients. On the other hand, the diagnosis of a heart attack is atypical for patients of a lower age group, which in turn can delay the diagnosis. An ECG is quick and inexpensive and should therefore not be omitted in young people.
