TL;DR
A new heart attack classification, which moves several rare causes that disproportionately affect women into the primary category, promises to reduce missed and misdiagnosed heart disease in women.
Heart disease is the number-one killer of American women, yet its symptoms are often overlooked: women's attacks may merely bring fatigue, nausea, or breathlessness, not the crushing chest pain men feel. Now four major cardiology societies have finally rewritten the definition.
The old numbered system was a pain
The previous classification sorted heart attacks into numbered types that were awkward in practice, leading to inconsistencies in diagnosis and treatment. The new system abandons numbers, using just three classes: primary, secondary, and procedure-related.
Causes that hit women harder finally get their due
Several rare triggers that predominantly affect women — a torn artery wall (spontaneous coronary artery dissection), a vessel spasm, or a wandering clot or fat globule — were previously not classed as severe, so they were not fully investigated. The new rules put them in the primary category and require an angiogram to pin down the exact cause.
Experts at the British Heart Foundation say this could change the lives of vast numbers of women.
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