Over 700,000 Australians live with coronary heart disease. One Australian will suffer a heart attack every 10 minutes, it is the nation’s biggest killer of men and women.
In Australia, heart disease will kill three times as many women as breast cancer. Heart disease is often silent with no warning signs before a devastating heart attack. To protect yourself from heart disease find out about the signs and symptoms of a heart attack. It could save your life.
Warning signs of heart attack
Warning signs of a heart attack vary from person to person and they may not always be sudden or severe. Although chest pain or discomfort is the most common symptom of a heart attack, some people will not experience chest pain at all, while others will experience only mild chest pain or discomfort.
When having a heart attack you may experience pain, pressure, heaviness or tightness in one or more parts of your upper body, in combination with other symptoms. People have described this as ‘like an elephant sitting on my chest’, ‘a belt being tightened around my chest’, ‘bad indigestion’ or ‘feeling not quite right’. You may have a choking feeling in your throat. Your arms may feel useless and heavy.
The warning signs of a heart attack include pain, pressure, heaviness or tightness in one or more of your:
- chest
- shoulder(s)
- neck
- arm(s)
- jaw
- back.
You may also:
- feel nauseous
- feel dizzy or light-headed
- have a cold sweat
- feel short of breath.
You may have just one of these symptoms or you may have a combination of them. Symptoms can come on suddenly or develop over minutes and get progressively worse. Symptoms usually last for at least 10 minutes.
If you have warning signs of heart attack that are severe, get worse quickly or last more than 10 minutes, call triple zero (000) immediately and ask for an ambulance.
Please refer to following websites for more info on this matter.
