HHS HealthBeat (July 16, 2008)

What experience didn’t teach

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

What you don’t know can hurt you, and research on people with heart disease indicates there’s a lot they don’t know. Kathleen Dracup of the University of California, San Francisco gathered data on people in the United States, Australia and New Zealand who had documented coronary heart disease. 

Dracup wanted to know what symptoms they knew. Knowing symptoms raises the odds someone will seek treatment fast. And that’s especially important for people who already have heart disease.

Dracup found most did know a feeling of pressure on the chest as a heart attack symptom, but nearly half did not know enough about other symptoms:

``Many patients didn’t recognize things like dizziness, nausea, sweating, and fatigue as symptoms of heart attack.’’ (8 seconds)

The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: July, 16 2008