Europeans’ heartfelt ignorance
Many don't recognize heart attack, stroke warning signs
By Bruce Bower
Heart attacks and strokes wreak havoc throughout Europe but often travel incognito. A majority of people in nine European countries recognize few or no warning signs of these potentially deadly conditions, a new study finds.
About half of Europeans don’t realize that it’s best to call an ambulance when someone displays stroke symptoms, say psychologist Jutta Mata of the University of Basel in Switzerland and her colleagues. People with high blood pressure or who are obese — two key risk factors for heart attack and stroke — knew no more about warning signs or how to respond to strokes than anyone else, the researchers will report in Health Expectations.
“Across all nine countries, people knew surprisingly little about heart attack and stroke symptoms and how to react to them,” Mata says.
The findings come from a sample of 10,228 inhabitants of Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. Participants’ ages ranged from 14 to 98.