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Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study

BACKGROUND: Women are more likely to delay medical help-seeking for ACS symptoms. Understanding patients’ experience of the symptoms and their response is essential in improving help-seeking behaviors and timely diagnosis and treatment for ACS. This study aimed to explore women’s experience of ACS,...

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Autores principales: Asghari, Elnaz, Gholizadeh, Leila, Kazami, Leila, Taban Sadeghi, Mohammadreza, Separham, Ahmad, Khezerloy-aghdam, Naser
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9703419/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36443668
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12872-022-02892-3
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author Asghari, Elnaz
Gholizadeh, Leila
Kazami, Leila
Taban Sadeghi, Mohammadreza
Separham, Ahmad
Khezerloy-aghdam, Naser
author_facet Asghari, Elnaz
Gholizadeh, Leila
Kazami, Leila
Taban Sadeghi, Mohammadreza
Separham, Ahmad
Khezerloy-aghdam, Naser
author_sort Asghari, Elnaz
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Women are more likely to delay medical help-seeking for ACS symptoms. Understanding patients’ experience of the symptoms and their response is essential in improving help-seeking behaviors and timely diagnosis and treatment for ACS. This study aimed to explore women’s experience of ACS, their response to the symptoms, and treatment-seeking decisions. METHODS: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted in a tertiary referral specialized heart hospital affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Participants included 39 women who had experienced ACS for the first time. RESULTS: Four main themes emerged from the analysis of interview transcripts: (1) the onset of symptoms, (2) the types of symptoms, (3) response to symptoms and (4) arriving at the hospital. These themes and associated sub-themes explained women’s experience of ACS symptoms, their response to the symptoms, and decision to seek medical help. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified and discussed factors contributing to the prehospital delay in women and their decision-making to seek medical care for ACS symptoms. The results are consistent with previous research indicating that ACS symptoms in women are somewhat different from men, and women tend to underestimate their symptoms and attribute them to non-cardiac causes. Women should be supported to develop awareness and understanding of ACS symptoms and appreciate the importance of early treatment-seeking in the disease outcomes.
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spelling pubmed-97034192022-11-28 Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study Asghari, Elnaz Gholizadeh, Leila Kazami, Leila Taban Sadeghi, Mohammadreza Separham, Ahmad Khezerloy-aghdam, Naser BMC Cardiovasc Disord Research BACKGROUND: Women are more likely to delay medical help-seeking for ACS symptoms. Understanding patients’ experience of the symptoms and their response is essential in improving help-seeking behaviors and timely diagnosis and treatment for ACS. This study aimed to explore women’s experience of ACS, their response to the symptoms, and treatment-seeking decisions. METHODS: This qualitative descriptive study was conducted in a tertiary referral specialized heart hospital affiliated with Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. Participants included 39 women who had experienced ACS for the first time. RESULTS: Four main themes emerged from the analysis of interview transcripts: (1) the onset of symptoms, (2) the types of symptoms, (3) response to symptoms and (4) arriving at the hospital. These themes and associated sub-themes explained women’s experience of ACS symptoms, their response to the symptoms, and decision to seek medical help. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified and discussed factors contributing to the prehospital delay in women and their decision-making to seek medical care for ACS symptoms. The results are consistent with previous research indicating that ACS symptoms in women are somewhat different from men, and women tend to underestimate their symptoms and attribute them to non-cardiac causes. Women should be supported to develop awareness and understanding of ACS symptoms and appreciate the importance of early treatment-seeking in the disease outcomes. BioMed Central 2022-11-28 /pmc/articles/PMC9703419/ /pubmed/36443668 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12872-022-02892-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2022 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research
Asghari, Elnaz
Gholizadeh, Leila
Kazami, Leila
Taban Sadeghi, Mohammadreza
Separham, Ahmad
Khezerloy-aghdam, Naser
Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title_full Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title_fullStr Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title_full_unstemmed Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title_short Symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
title_sort symptom recognition and treatment-seeking behaviors in women experiencing acute coronary syndrome for the first time: a qualitative study
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9703419/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36443668
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12872-022-02892-3
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