HEART ATTACK: SOME EXPERIENCED SYMPTOMS
Some people may experience minor persistent symptoms that precede and herald their heart attacks. Such symptoms may include a recurring pain in the chest, neck, elbow, or even wrist or back that comes on with exertion or even at rest. The pain may have the quality of a minor toothache or pressure. The clue that something important may be happening is simple: this is usually a new experience, different from any other discomforts that the person has felt before.
Some people feel embarrassed about going to a doctor for fear that he will find nothing wrong. This is wrong in itself. It takes many years of training for a doctor to learn to make a diagnosis accurately, so certainly the average person cannot be expected to be correct in the diagnosis of his own ailments even a fraction of the time. Another group of people tends to minimize all symptoms because they refuse to believe that they could possibly be sick. They have done well for so many years that it is inconceivable to them that they could suffer from a heart attack. Vanity can become a treacherous assassin. The simple truth is that 50 percent of deaths in the United States today are caused by diseases of the heart and blood vessels, and heart attacks claim 55 percent of these deaths. It can happen to you and the chances are that it eventually will.
Many hospitals in the Western world have instituted new programs in an attempt to decrease the death rate from heart attacks. Intensive care units in modern hospitals have increased the patient survival rate. In several large cities in the
United States and England, mobile coronary care units have been established to provide patients with expert attendance during their transport from home to hospital. A recent study has shown, however, that the time required to take a patient from his home to the hospital is but a fraction of the time that is wasted between the onset of the attack and actual arrival at the hospital, where positive measures can be taken to save his life. The patient usually waits hours and sometimes a day or two before he believes that something is seriously wrong and summons help. Since the greatest risk of death occurs during the first few hours of a heart attack, with the probability of death decreasing rapidly after the first day or two, it is obvious that further significant improvement in survival rates depends upon the individual himself.
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