About half of all heart attacks are silent.
It's a shocking reality for millions of people across the country: They go for a routine physical exam only to find out they've had a heart attack that happened days, weeks or months earlier.
About half of all heart attacks are silent, meaning the symptoms are so subtle, the person didn't even know they had one, according to a study in the journal Circulation. Yet a silent heart attack is identical to a normal heart attack in all other respects. "As a critical care cardiologist, to me silent heart attacks are actually scarier, because when people have symptoms, they know to seek care right away," says Dr. Evelina Grayver, director of the coronary care unit at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, New York.
