
ast January, Lisa Morrow's 88-year-old grandmother woke her at 3 a.m. complaining of back and shoulder pain and feeling clammy. The two debated what to do for nearly two hours. "I thought it was the flu," says Morrow, a 38-year-old New Yorker. Finally, Morrow convinced her grandmother to go to the ER. Doctors quickly diagnosed a heart attack and put in four stents to open up a fully clogged artery. The surgery helped, briefly, but the attack had weakened the heart muscle so much that it perforated several hours later. Sadly, Morrow's grandmother did not survive.
"A heart attack was the last thing on my mind," says Morrow. Indeed, a recent study reveals that while 92 percent of adults know the most obvious sign of a heart attack -- chest pain -- only 31 percent know all five major signs, reports lead author of the study, Jing Fang, M.D., epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention.--read more