In this special section of the Heart Disease and Cardiology website, we'll deal specifically with the issue of heart disease in women. A special section is warranted because of two common misapprehensions held by both women and their doctors: women don't really get much heart disease, and when they do, it behaves pretty much like the heart disease that men get.
The real facts are that heart disease is the number one killer of women, and when women get heart disease it often acts quite differently than it does in men. Failing to understand these two fundamental facts leads to a lot of preventable deaths and disability in women with heart disease.
In a recent survey conducted by the American Heart Association, 6 in 10 women said that the major threat to their health was breast cancer; only 1 in 10 said it was heart disease. But in 1999, while cancer was killing 264,000 American women (41,000 of whom died of breast cancer,) cardiovascular disease killed 513,000 -- and it's the same story every year. In fact, each year since 1984, more women than men have died of heart disease.
Many doctors don't get it either. Less than half the doctors in one recent survey considered heart disease to be a major threat to their female patients. Worse, less than half of all women receiving regular medical care say that their doctors have ever talked to them about reducing their risk of heart disease.
Worst of all, the symptoms of heart disease -- and even the heart disease itself -- can be quite different in women than in men. And since medical textbooks almost exclusively describe "typical" heart disease (that is, the kind men get), doctors often fail to recognize heart disease when they see it in their female patients. The fact that heart disease is so common in women, and at the same time is underestimated and misunderstood by both women and their doctors, contributes in no small way to the high death rate.
The purpose of this special section is to tell women what they need to know about heart disease. There is a lot of information on this website about heart disease in general, but here, we'll emphasize the characteristics of the heart disease women get, trying to point out how heart disease in women is different from heart disease in men. We'll examine the differences in risk factors, in the symptoms of heart disease, in the diagnosis of heart disease, and in the heart diseases themselves. It is very important for women to understand this information -- especially because there's a good chance their doctors don't.
Click on the following Section Titles to find the information you need:
RISK FACTORS FOR HEART DISEASE IN WOMEN
SYMPTOMS OF HEART DISEASE IN WOMEN
