Study reveals worrying level of missed MI symptoms

Symptoms of myocardial infarction (MI) may have been missed in many patients admitted to hospital, according to a study on all heart attack hospital admissions and deaths in England. The authors, from Imperial College London, say more research is urgently needed to establish whether it is possible to predict the risk of fatal MI in patients for whom this condition was not recorded as the main reason for hospital admission. The classic symptoms of heart attack may be subtle or even absent in some cases of MI, which may therefore be missed or overlooked. In this study, the researchers examined