Early intervention to protect the heart is critical, so seeking help quickly and describing your symptoms accurately will lead to a faster diagnosis and faster treatment.  Heart attack symptoms may present differently in women than in men.

You can have cardiac ischemia with no pain and no symptoms. This is called "silent ischemia," an ischemic episode the person does not know about.  This is especially true for people with diabetes.  You can even have a silent heart attack, one with no symptoms. 

However, the typical symptoms of heart attack include:

• Chest pain or discomfort
• Can feel like squeezing, pressure, or fullness
• Can last more than a few minutes, or come and go
• Pain, discomfort or numbness in other parts of the body, especially
• One or both arms and/or shoulders
• Neck
• Jaw and/or tooth
• Back
• Stomach or abdomen
• This pain can be mistaken for gastrointestinal symptoms, such as heartburn
• Shortness of breath
• Cold sweat and/or clammy skin
• Lightheadedness
• Nausea and/or vomiting

The more of these symptoms you have at the same time, the more important it is to get medical help as soon as possible.

A heart attack can be diagnosed through a variety of tests, including:

• Electrocardiogram (EKG, ECG, or cardiogram): a measurement of the heart's electrical activity (which controls the heartbeat) by an EKG machine (which is attached to the chest with electrodes)
• Echocardiogram: sound waves are bounced off the heart to produce still and moving images of it (similar to ultrasound imaging used with pregnant women to produce images of fetuses.)
• Cardiac catheterization: in this more invasive test, a small tube (catheter) is inserted through a blood vessel and threaded up into the heart, to measure blood flow and pressure 
• Coronary angiogram (also called arteriogram): an x-ray of the inside of the coronary arteries to look for blockages
• During cardiac catheterization, a contrast dye is injected into the catheter that enables blockages to be seen on the x-ray
• Blood tests: when cells (including heart muscle cells) die, enzymes are released into the blood; blood tests can detect the presence and amount of these enzymes