Half of Canadians may have had an interaction or personal experience with heart disease and stroke, as claimed by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, however, the majority doesn’t fully comprehend the crucial factors associated with these health crises.
Following a recent survey by the Heart and Stroke Foundation, astonishingly, one in three Canadians demonstrated confusion between the terms ‘cardiac arrest’ and ‘heart attack’. Moreover, a significant gap exists in the public understanding of men’s and women’s respective heart attack symptoms.
According to Lesley James, spokesperson and Director of Health Policy and Systems at Heart and Stroke, what seems most alarming is the widespread belief that stroke symptoms can only be recognized by a trained healthcare professional. James advocates that ability to recognize stroke symptoms should be common knowledge as a stroke could befall anyone, irrespective of age.
In pursuit of clarity on this topic, an online enquiry led by Environics Research Group was conducted nationwide between May 29 and June 9, 2023, covering 2,003 Canadians aged 18 and over.
Contrary to general belief, the labels ‘cardiac arrest’ and ‘heart attack’ aren’t interchangeable. While a cardiac arrest refers to the abrupt and unexpected cessation of heartbeat, a heart attack occurs when the heart’s blood supply slows down or gets blocked. The ignorance of this distinction is echoed among one-third of the Canadian population as per the said survey.
James feels it’s essential to step up educational efforts to eliminate the prevalent misconception about cardiac arrest and heart attack, underscoring the urgency of immediate medical intervention in both scenarios.
With regards to a stroke, it is caused by disruption in the brain’s blood supply.
The same causal vascular risk factors underlie heart attack and stroke, such as smoking, diabetes, cholesterol, hypertension, obesity and sedentary lifestyle, noted Dr. Robert Fahed, a neurologist at The Ottawa Hospital in an interview with CTVNews.ca.
Another survey finding throws light on the marked differences in men’s and women’s heart attack symptoms. Symptoms for women having a heart attack deviate from the textbook ‘Hollywood heart attack’. Compared to extreme chest pain, women are likelier to experience shortness of breath, discomfort or pain in the belly or lower chest, lightheadedness, pressure in the upper back and severe fatigue.
What exacerbates the issue is under-recognition of these signs among half of Canadian women, attributed to these symptoms lacking the pronounced severity found in men. To eliminate such disparities we need to herald an era of sensitisation to recognize heart attack signals across both genders, asserts James.
Fahed sheds light on why women display different heart attack symptoms, attributing it to the higher amount of estrogen produced in women which influences the heart and blood vessels distinctively, leading to varied severity of heart attacks at different ages amongst women.
Fahed highlights the new challenge is how a majority of women tend to downplay the gravity of their symptoms, risking irreversible damage or even worse, mortality.
He further stressed the need for better representation of women who’ve suffered a stroke or heart attack in clinical trials to unravel the intricacies of the health condition and ensure tailormade remedies for them.
As per Heart and Stroke, 90 per cent of cardiac arrest cases that happen outside a hospital setting unfortunately do not survive. Regrettably, one in three Canadians are not aware of this.
The golden rule to follow when responding to signs of a stroke, heart attack or cardiac arrest is to dial 9-1-1 without delay to ensure the immediate initiation of life-saving medical treatment, as recommended by Heart and Stroke.
Fahed strongly advises against driving sufferers of stroke, heart attack or cardiac arrest to the hospital, which crucially loses time when immediate intervention could be delivered on the spot via cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) or the administering of an automated external defibrillator (AED). In a race against time, immediate action significantly optimizes the patient’s prognosis.
