Destination Health 2025

Destination Health

Heart emergency, how to know and prevent it

The heart speaks to us every day with signals that we can learn to interpret. Before it is too late

29 June 2025

da sx, Nicoletta Carbone, giornalista di Radio 24; Mauro Luca Agnifili, cardiologo interventista senior dell’IRCCS Policlinico San Donato; Serenella Castelvecchio, cardiologa responsabile del programma di medicina di genere dell’IRCCS Policlinico San Donato

3' min read

Learning to listen to the heart, before it asks for help. Too often overlooked, the heart speaks to us every day with signals that we can learn to recognise. Dr. Serenella Castelvecchio, Cardiologist, Head of the Gender Medicine Programme at IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, and Dr. Mauro Luca Agnifili, Senior Interventional Cardiologist of the Clinical, Interventional and Coronary Intensive Care Cardiology Unit at IRCCS Policlinico San Donato, discussed the subject with a factual and informative approach.

The main focus of the panel: understanding what prevention really means, which habits are 'friendly' to our heart and which, on the other hand, endanger it.

Few simple rules

The starting point was to share the 8 rules for healthy living identified by the American Heart Associations: take care of your diet, exercise consistently over time, control your blood sugar (and maybe insulin), control your weight, control your cholesterol, monitor your blood pressure, stop smoking and, finally, take care of your sleep.

'In particular, metabolic prevention, i.e. following a good diet, is the pre-requisite for good cardiovascular prevention,' Dr Castelvecchio pointed out. "So is doing constant aerobic physical activity," Dr Agnifili completed.

The risk that the two experts denounce is indeed that of acute events (heart attacks and/or strokes) occurring at an increasingly early age, compared to 15-20 years ago. Already in the 35-50 age bracket. The causes? 'Stress, unbalanced lifestyles and bad eating habits'.

Far Stroke in Women

With an alert issued on the gender difference, because women in particular should be made aware of the need for care: often the symptoms of a female heart attack are more blurred and less recognisable than those of a male one, leading to delays in diagnosis and treatment. 'Women's hearts are protected until menopause, that is true,' Castelvecchio clarifies. 'However, one should still arrive at the menopause prepared, knowing that the metabolism slows down'. Translated: 'A general cardiological examination should be done from the age of 40. And risk factors should be monitored'.

When the heart "dances"

Another fundamental aspect to be better understood is when the heart loses its 'rhythm'. This topic was covered in another interesting panel (but it was also possible to carry out blood pressure screening with experts from the San Donato Group who taught how to read the values).

What does it mean? What consequences can it cause? The heart, in fact, is our internal metronome. Cardiac arrhythmias, i.e. beat irregularities, are common and often harmless, but in some cases they can signal more serious conditions. This was well explained by Professor Massimo Pierpoli Cardiologist Director of the Operative Unit of University Cardiology Clinic - Perioperative and Cardiorespiratory Rehabilitation at the IRCCS Policlinico San Donato and Lecturer at the University of Milan, and Dr Marianna Volpe, Cardiologist Head of the Cardiological Rehabilitation Unit at the IRCCS Policlinico San Donato in Milan.

The two specialists talked about the causes and symptoms of arrhythmias, the differences between arrhythmias and palpitations, and how these disorders manifest themselves according to gender and age, always with the aim of providing clear and accessible information.

In essence, 'everyone needs to get to know and listen to each other. Having a simple examination with ECG, even if only to get clues about possible further pathologies, is always a useful thing to do,' explained Pierpoli and Volpe.