A
newly published review reveals that even though more women die of
heart disease than men, not enough women understand and appreciate
their risks. The analysis also confirms that doctors still aren't
treating women with known heart problems as aggressively as they do
men. The reviewers, from Ohio State University, note that coronary
artery disease is responsible for more deaths among women than breast
cancer, chronic lower respiratory disease,
Alzheimer's disease, and accidents
combined.
Despite those grim statistics, women are still less likely to receive
preventive treatments that are routinely recommended for men (such as
drugs to lower cholesterol, aspirin to help prevent blood clots that
can lead to heart attacks, and lifestyle advice to lower risks. Heart
attacks in women may not cause the crushing chest pain men report.
Published in
Global Heart, the journal of the World Heart
Federation, the review observes that CT scans and other imaging
techniques used to evaluate cardiac problems reveal that women generally
have narrower coronary arteries than men, their symptoms are more
likely to be due to blockages of smaller blood vessels, which might be
missed. The reviewers also report that after heart attacks, women are
55 percent less likely to participate in cardiac rehabilitation than
men are.
My take? We've known about the discrepancies in treatment between men
and women with heart problems
for a decade or more. I'm disappointed
that this review suggests that nothing much has changed. Despite
recognition that
heart disease
is more of a threat to women than it is to men, many women still don't
appreciate their risks and many doctors apparently don't either. The
only good news in this review is the fact that the number of American
women surveyed who actually know that heart disease is the leading
cause of death for their gender increased from 30 percent in 1997 to 54
percent in 2009.
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