INVC,,
Delhi,,
In the emergency room heart attacks can be both over and under diagnosed. 10% of heart attacks are over diagnosed and equivalent number can be missed as the ECG can be normal in the first six hours after an heart attack, said Padmashri & Dr. B.C. Roy National Awardee, Dr. KK Aggarwal, President, Heart Care Foundation of India. Most heart attacks occur in winter all over the world including India. Missing heart attacks during this period in the early hours of the morning can lead to spurts in number of cases of sudden cardiac death. Every effort should be taken to reduce the number of false positive or false negative diagnosis of heart attack. In a study published in JAMA Henry and group studied the medical records of 1,345 people treated for suspected heart attacks in a regional system between 2003 and 2006, looking at emergency room decisions. In the study all patients had classical heart attack called STEMI heart attack characterized by a specific ECG pattern. 14 % of heart attacks were over diagnosed. During Xmas most senior doctors maybe on vacation making the situation further bad for the common man. Men and women have about the same adjusted in-hospital death rate for heart attack — but women are more likely to die if hospitalized for a more severe type of heart attack.
