Women and Heart Attacks: Diagnosis and Treatment

Diagnosis and treatment of a heart attack can begin when emergency medical personnel arrive after you call 911. At the hospital emergency room, doctors will work quickly to find out if you are having or have had a heart attack and give you treatment.

 

If you are having a heart attack, doctors will work quickly to restore blood flow to the heart and continuously monitor vital signs to detect and treat complications.

 

Long-term treatment after a heart attack may include:

 

Women and Heart Attacks: What About Aspirin for Prevention?

Many women wonder whether aspirin is good for preventing heart attacks. Results of a recent study showed that aspirin did not prevent first heart attacks or death from heart or blood vessel disease (known medically as cardiovascular disease) in women. However, age does appear to play a role in how effective aspirin is. For example, the greatest benefit of low-dose aspirin appeared to be in women 65 and older. In this subgroup, low-dose aspirin reduced the risk of major heart or blood vessel problems by 26 percent. However, the benefits of low-dose aspirin therapy must be weighed against the risk of an increased chance of internal bleeding, a well known side effect of aspirin use.

 

Above all, women, like men, should adopt the well proven heart attack prevention approaches that reduce the risk of a heart attack, which include the following: