Heart Attack

Pat E. discovered that she had a problem with her heart entirely by accident.

"I was on our neighborhood community planning board, and the city health department came by to give us a demonstration of a new community health screening program that they were launching. The nurse "screened" all of us individually, and in the course of my screening it indicated that I was hypertensive."

Pat was surprised by the initial diagnosis, but it wasn't confirmed until six years later, after her first child was born. "I was disappointed when I'd gotten the news when I was younger. But both of my parents had heart problems, so I guess it wasn't that big of a surprise."

She also had noticed that sometimes her heart would beat very quickly, although she had figured out how to get it back under control on her own. But one night as she was driving home from a dinner party, her heart started beating rapidly—and she felt pain in her left side and across her chest.

"I turned the car around and headed for the nearest emergency room," said Pat, who was immediately admitted. All of her symptoms pointed to a heart attack—although symptoms of a heart attack often vary between men and women.

Pat was immediately hooked-up to an EKG. Her doctors began to run a battery of tests, including blood tests for Myoglobin, which tests for the protein produced by the body when a heart attack starts, and Creatine Kinase (CK), which tests for an enzyme released by dying cells in the heart. The EKG showed that she was having a heart attack. But when the blood test results came back, they indicated that Pat was in cardiac distress and that she had not experienced a heart attack.

"I was incredibly relieved," said Pat. "The lab test spared me from a huge amount of worry, to say nothing of treatment that I didn't need."

She was subsequently diagnosed with supra ventricular tachycardia-the periodic rapid beating of the heart, often over 90 beats per minute—and is under the regular care of a cardiologist.

Because cardiac lab tests have become a central element in heart attack treatment guidelines, Pat avoided an unnecessary hospital stay and an incorrect diagnosis. Most importantly, she was saved from unwarranted treatment for a serious medical condition that she didn't have.