Tag: Circulation

Nearly half of all heart attacks may be silent, occurring without any symptoms like chest pain, shortness of breath and cold sweats, a U.S. study suggests.

Silent heart attacks, discovered during exams by cardiologists, were more common in men, researchers found. (Symptomatic heart attacks are more common in men, too.)

But in the ensuing years, women with silent heart attacks were 58 percent more likely to die compared to women with no heart attacks, whereas the mortality rate for men with a silent heart attack was only 23 percent higher than for men without a heart attack.

Over the last 40 years, heart disease rates have dropped in the U.S. overall, but the changes varied widely by region, with the highest rates of the disease shifting from the Northeast to the South, researchers say.

"Heart disease‚" refers to several conditions including coronary artery disease, which can cause heart attack. Despite the decline in deaths over time, heart disease is still the leading cause of death in the U.S., killing more than 600,000 people per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).