Heart Attack Misdiagnosis
When a person suffers a heart attack, it is a scary, painful, hectic, and often confusing experience. One thing is clear, though: the person must get quick and effective medical treatment or the possibility of their health being permanently affected is high. A heart attack, particularly one that is not promptly treated, can cause permanent heart muscle damage, stroke, heart aneurysm, complete heart failure, or even death. In fact, over 400,000 Americans died from cardiac arrest in 2006 alone. Unfortunately, some of these deaths surely resulted from the fact that emergency room personnel sometimes misdiagnose heart attacks as other, much less serious conditions.
While an extremely severe heart attack may run little risk of misdiagnosis, many are less obvious in nature. Symptoms of these more clandestine heart issues may include dizziness, indigestion, sweating, backache, shortness of breath, and nausea. These symptoms may lead a mild or even moderate heart attack to be mistaken for much less serious conditions such as gastrointestinal problems, heartburn, anxiety attacks, pneumonia, bronchitis or panic attacks. While bronchitis may require medical treatment of some sort, it hardly compares to the attention with which a person who is suffering or has recently suffered a heart attack should receive.