Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School

In brief: Sudden sweat may signal a heart attack

In brief

Sudden sweat may signal a heart attack

Researchers have found that many heart attack victims (up to a third in one study) don't experience chest pain or anything remotely like the "Hollywood heart attack" in which a person crumples to the floor, gripping his or her chest. In fact, one study reports that for many heart attack sufferers, sudden sweating is the stand-out symptom and the one most likely to take them to a doctor.

Why? According to Catherine J. Ryan, the study's lead investigator and an assistant professor at the College of Nursing at the University of Illinois, Chicago, it may be that breaking out into a sweat for no apparent reason "is one thing that you can't explain away," unlike shortness of breath, nausea, fatigue, and chest pain, which can be chalked up to the flu, a bad night's sleep, a spicy meal, or any number of other things.

She and her colleagues amassed data on 1,073 patients that had been collected in other studies. They picked out 12 common symptoms and grouped them into clusters to see which led to delays in seeking help and which got people to act more quickly.

They presented preliminary findings at a meeting of the American Heart Association in November 2005.

Not surprisingly, people with the greatest number of symptoms tended to act more quickly. For that group, the median time (half sooner, half later) between the onset of symptoms and seeking help was three hours.

Also not surprising: Older people (average age 67) usually sought help sooner (median time: 2.5 hours) than younger people. In older people, a heart attack is more likely to cause functional changes that are frightening. The symptoms include shortness of breath, fainting, or confusion. On the other hand, symptoms tend to be significantly milder in older people — "muted" is how Ryan put it. Sometimes an episode of confusion is the only outward sign.

So heart attacks can "show" themselves in many ways besides chest pain. And you need to be ready to recognize the non-Hollywood symptoms, which may include sweating or just sudden confusion. Any delay in treatment can make the consequences of a heart attack much, much worse.

Last updated:	September 05, 2008