SCAD: When Healthy Young Women Have Heart Attacks
Heart symptoms should be taken seriously for either sex, at any age.
By Lisa Esposito, Staff Writer |March 28, 2018, at 1:48 p.m.
SCAD may be responsible for up to 35 percent of heart attacks in women under 50, and more than 40 percent of pregnancy-associated heart attacks. (Minerva Studio/Getty Images)
When you're a healthy, vibrant woman in your 30s, the last thing you expect is to find yourself recovering from a heart attack – and wondering when the next one might happen. This is the frightening reality for women who experience a spontaneous coronary artery dissection, or SCAD.
SCAD is a potentially life-threatening emergency involving tearing, or dissection, of one or more of the heart's blood vessels, most often the left anterior descending artery. As layers of the arterial wall come apart, it results in a reduction of blood flow to the heart, which may cause a heart attack, abnormal heart rhythms or sudden cardiac death.
https://health.usnews.com/health-care/patient-advice/articles/2018-03-28/scad-when-healthy-young-women-have-heart-attacks
