Heart Attack Symptoms
Heart attack symptoms vary and usually last for at least 10 minutes.
You may experience one or more of these heart attack signs:
- Pain in the chest
A heart attack usually causes discomfort or pain in the centre of the chest. The pain may come on suddenly, or sometimes starts slowly, developing over minutes. It may feel like tightness, pressure, heaviness, fullness, or squeezing. The feeling has been described as: 'like a steel band tightening around my chest', 'like an elephant sitting on my chest' or 'like a red hot poker in the centre of my chest'. The pain may be severe, moderate or even mild.
- Pain spreading
The chest discomfort may spread to the neck and throat, jaw, shoulders, the back, either or both arms and even into the wrists and hands.
- Discomfort in the upper body
Some people do not get any chest pain -only discomfort in parts of the upper body. There may be a choking feeling in the throat. The arms may feel 'heavy' or 'useless'.
- Other symptoms
Often there may also be difficulty breathing, nausea or vomiting, a cold sweat or a feeling of being dizzy or light-headed.
Heart Attack Diagnosis
If you are rushed to hospital with a suspected heart attack and heart attack symptoms, a number of tests will be performed to confirm you are having a heart attack and help your health care team decide on the best treatment for you.
Heart attack diagnosis may include:
- Electrocardiogram (ECG) - During an ECG test, electrical leads are placed on your chest, arms and legs. These leads detect small electrical signals and produce a tracing on graph paper illustrating the electrical impulses travelling through the heart muscle.
- Blood tests
- Chest X-ray
- Angiogram - This is a special X-ray that shows whether your coronary arteries are narrowed or blocked. Under a local anaesthetic, a small tube (catheter) is inserted into an artery in your arm or groin and guided into the heart. Dye is injected through the catheter into the coronary arteries and X-rays are taken, giving detailed information about the condition of your coronary arteries.