Women are less likely to experience chest pains when having a heart attack, new research shows.
US scientists looked at the differences in symptoms between 481,581 women and 661,932 men, all of whom featured in a national database of heart attack patients.
They found that 42 per cent of women did not have chest pains when they arrived at hospital, compared with just 31 per cent of men.
The researchers also observed that a higher proportion of women died in hospital, compared with men of the same age, and that the difference in death rates was most noticeable among under-65s.
Publishing their findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study authors concluded that 'women were more likely than men to present without chest pain and had higher mortality than men within the same age group'.
Cathy Ross, the British Heart Foundation's senior cardiac nurse, said that heart attacks do not necessarily involve excruciating chest pains.
'Symptoms vary; for some the pain is severe and yet others may feel nothing more than a mild discomfort or heaviness,' she revealed.
Ms Ross noted that heart attacks in young women are rare, but that the study revealed smoking to be the main cause among these women.