Caring for a Woman's Heart
Many women worry about the men in their lives developing heart disease, but few women worry about themselves and heart disease. The dangerous myth that heart disease affects only men can cause women to close their eyes to the risks they face.
Women are more likely to die from a heart attack than men, and heart disease is the No. 1 killer for women. Reasons for the high death rate have been attributed to the inability of women to recognize warning signs, inaccurate diagnostic tests and age.
"People often ignore or rationalize the symptoms," said Dr. Robert Roth, cardiologist with Columbia St. Mary's. "They don't want to think it's their heart, and so the first thing we assess is the likelihood that they have heart disease by looking at their risk factors."
Risk Factors
The first risk factor is gender, Roth said. Heart disease is generally thought to affect men more than women, and prevention efforts have typically been targeted at middle-aged men because they were seen as the prime candidates for heart attack. However, the heart attack rate for women increased by 36 percent during the 1980s and '90s, a time when heart attacks among men were declining by eight percent.
Women tend to be about 10 years older than men when first experiencing symptoms of heart disease and may be considered in too poor health to endure correction procedures. Since women often downplay the severity of heart disease symptoms, doctors may not treat them as aggressively as they do men.
"We can't really ignore or not ask women about it, and we need to start asking earlier," Dr. Roth said, despite the fact that women typically get the disease eight to 10 years later than men. "Six to seven years after menopause, all else being equal, the risks for women are the same as they are for men. We need to screen post-menopausal and even pre-menopausal women very carefully."
According to the Framingham Heart Study, in 63 percent of women who died suddenly of heart disease, there were no previous symptoms of the disease reported. While it may be more difficult to diagnose heart disease in women, nearly all therapies for treating heart disease and preventive measures prove beneficial in women as well.
