Many heart attack-prone people ignorant of risk

Last Updated: 2008-05-26 16:01:50 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Almost half of people with doctor-diagnosed heart disease know little about heart attack symptoms and do not perceive themselves to be at risk for a heart attack.

Those findings come from a study in which researchers asked 3,522 older adults (average age 67) to identify possible heart attack symptoms and to answer true-or-false questions about heart disease. All of them were at high risk for a heart attack as they had already had one or had undergone a procedure to unclog narrowed coronary arteries.

"We found many things surprising," Kathleen Dracup, professor and dean of the University of California, San Francisco School of Nursing who led the study, told Reuters Health. For example, 46 percent of those surveyed had poor knowledge of heart disease, with less than 70 percent of answers correct.

"People who already had a heart attack or heart surgery were not more knowledgeable about the nature of cardiac symptoms than those who did not have this history," Dracup said. This helps explain "an often-described finding in many studies" that patients with a history of heart attack often don't seek treatment any faster than patients who have not had a heart attack in the past, she added.

The results also showed that a "significant" 43 percent of those surveyed did not realize that their heart disease put them at higher risk for a future heart attack than other people their age. The fact that people who had heart bypass surgery were in this group "speaks to the misconception that surgery 'cures' the person, when, in fact, heart disease is a chronic illness that cannot be 'cured'," Dracup said.

Men scored lower than women on the heart attack symptom survey, yet were more confident than women that they would recognize cardiac symptoms in themselves. This shows that "knowledge and confidence are not always related," Dracup said.

If people don't know what the symptoms of a heart attack are, they may delay seeking treatment. "The more quickly individuals come to the hospital, the more likely it is that they will receive treatment ... that will save heart muscle," she emphasized.

"If you're told that you have coronary heart disease, you are at risk for a future heart attack and need to know what symptoms to expect and what steps to take," Dracup said. Symptoms of heart attack and other "acute coronary syndromes" include nausea and pain in the jaw, chest or left arm.

SOURCE: Archives of Internal Medicine, May 26, 2008.