Heartburn or Heart Attack? How to Tell the DifferenceFebruary 22, 2013
Three years ago, Lee Ann Williamson began feeling uncomfortable as she was playing the piano for the Sunday services at a church in a Kansas City suburb. She wasn't sure what it was-a heart problem, heartburn, or something else. All she knew was that it felt a bit like someone was sitting on her chest. She tried to ignore the chest pain and kept on playing.
However, as the morning progressed, the pain didn't go away and indeed got worse. Finally, the then-46-year-old sought out a physician who was a church member, who recommended she go straight to the emergency room.
At the hospital, her blood pressure was a very elevated 186 over 110 and she was given nitroglycerin, a drug that relaxes blood vessels and can often help restore blood flow to the heart in heart attack patients. The medication gave her a whopping headache, a common side effect of the drug. Then the ER staff told her that she was not, in fact, having a heart attack. Further testing showed that Williamson was suffering from acid reflux and had inflammation in her esophagus-a sign of gastroesophageal reflux disease, or GERD.
Williamson's experience is not an uncommon one; chest pain can turn out to be a heart attack or a less serious condition, such as heartburn-but it can be really tough to tell the difference. However, the symptoms do differ. The more you know, the easier it is to avoid heart damage if chest pain does turn out to be a heart attack or unnecessary panic if it doesn't.
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Posted by Ken at 12:00 AM