We tend to associate cardiac arrest with something sudden, which does not give any symptoms until the moment when, fatally, it occurs. However it is not always so. The body can warn during the previous weeks that something is wrong and it does so in many ways, according to researchers from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, in Los Angeles (USA).
Some of the signs that appear up to a month earlier are obvious: chest or abdominal pain, shortness of breath, palpitations, sudden drop in blood pressure, and loss of consciousness . Other more general symptoms, such as back pain or nausea and vomiting , can respond to a heart or other problem, but in any case they should be worthy of being evaluated by a doctor. And the problem, according to the researchers, is just that: that the signals are ignored and are not properly analyzed by a professional .
The consequences in these inadvertent cases are dire, because mortality skyrockets. Of the 68,000 people who suffer a heart attack a year in Spain, 27,000 die before reaching the hospital and being treated .
The uniqueness of the study resides in that the relationship of symptoms was obtained after asking not only patients, but also people around them , who also did not give importance to these signs. This should lead, according to specialists from the Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute, to prevention strategies that involve both the family and the workplace.
