Can Saliva Help Diagnose Heart Attack Faster?

When one is having a heart attack, timely treatment is very critical as this may decide whether he or she can survive. However, not all patients with syndromes like chest pain or cold sweat actually suffer heart attack. Likewise, many heart attack patients, especially women, show non-specific symptoms or have normal EKG readings. Therefore, timely diagnosis can be very difficult.

In April 2008, researchers from the University of Texas at Austin pointed out that a simple saliva test may one day be used to determine swiftly if a person is having heart attack because of the proteins found in the saliva. Such test can be used not only in ambulances but also in restaurants, drug stores and other places in the community.

A nano-bio-chip sensor was developed by the researchers. It is biochemically programmed to detect sets of proteins in saliva, which could determine if a person is currently having a heart attack or is at high risk of having a heart attack in the near future.

What the potential victim needs to do is to spit into a tube and the saliva is then transferred to credit-card-sized lab card, which holds the nano-bio-chip containing a standard battery of cardiac biomarkers. Then, the card is inserted into an analyzer to determine the patient's heart status in as little as 15 minutes.

56 people who had a heart attack and 59 healthy controls who did not were involved in a study. It was found that the test could actually distinguish heart attack patients from controls, with about the same diagnostic accuracy as that of standard blood tests.

In fact, there were about one third of the patients showing silent heart attack symptoms on EKG. These patients were required to admit to the emergency department to have blood test for enzymes that are indicative of a heart attack. The results of the test could be known after an hour to an hour and a half.

The saliva test could be used together with the EKG. This would help diagnosing those heart attacks that are silent on EKG. Meanwhile, larger and more refined studies on the saliva test have been planned.

Heart Attack Symptoms in Women Can Appear Differently!

Instead of having chest pain, a 70 year-old woman was overwhelmed by dizziness before breaking out into a cold sweat. She alerted her son and immediately she was admitted to the hospital. Yes, she had a heart attack.

While pain, tightness or discomfort in the chest is commonly experienced by most heart attack patients, women may get symptoms quite different from these. For example, dizziness, nausea and even indigestion-like discomfort. It was estimated that about one-third of patients, who are elderly and female, might experience atypical symptoms during a heart attack.

A possible explanation is that most women suffer from heart attacks at an older age than men do. The physiology of ageing could make the chest pain in these women not as intense as that in younger patients. Therefore, other atypical symptoms may be predominant during an attack. Too often, these symptoms can be ignored or just go unrecognized. Studies have shown that up to one third of the heart attacks can go unrecognized in women, comparing to one quarter in men.

Central chest pain lasting more than 20 to 30 minutes is considered as one of the major criteria for heart attack diagnosis. Doctors might not consider a heart attack as the diagnosis if there are other symptoms presented. Moreover, a heart attack could frequently be confused with indigestion or an anxiety attack.

If a person already has some known risk factors for heart disease such as diabetes, hypertension (high blood pressure), high cholesterol or smoking, and feels persistently unwell with the symptoms indicated above, he or she should see a doctor at once for a more detailed evaluation. In fact, a simple ECG or EKG (electrocardiogram) can always diagnose a heart attack even if the symptoms are non-specific.

Although heart attacks do occur suddenly without any obvious preceding symptoms, some patients may notice increasing frequency or severity of certain symptoms. For instance, some might have chest pains on exertion or even at rest, while others might feel more breathless than usual when doing their normal daily activities.