Women and Heart Disease
Her at Heart is a Scientific Initiative to raise awareness amongst healthcare professionals and the general public on the under-recognition of cardiovascular disease amongst women.
A Symposium on Cardiovascular Disease in Women was held at the Royal College of Physicians in London on 7 July 2006 to launch the Her at Heart initiative. This scientific conference was chaired by Dr Ghada Mikhail, Consultant Cardiologist at St Mary’s Hospital Trust. It brought together a group of national and international experts in the field to discuss how to increase awareness and how to improve the management of women with cardiovascular disease.
Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death in men and women worldwide exceeding the number of deaths from all cancers combined. It is still considered a disease of men and there has been little recognition of its importance in women. In the UK, cardiovascular disease was responsible for over 216,000 deaths in 2004. Coronary heart disease remains the most common cause of death in the UK with approximately one in six women dying from the disease. Deaths from heart disease are almost 4 times higher than from breast cancer. Despite these figures, many women lack the basic awareness that heart disease is their biggest killer with their main fear being breast cancer.
There are a number of risk factors which can increase the likelihood of developing heart disease. These include, smoking, high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, having a family history of heart disease and lack of exercise. Post menopausal women also have a higher risk of developing heart disease compared to pre menopausal women. It is important that women attempt to modify their risk factors early in life in order to reduce the risk of developing heart disease.
Women are more likely to present with atypical symptoms compared to men. As well as chest pain, women can present with shortness of breath, neck and jaw pain, upper back pain, abdominal pain, nausea and fatigue. In addition, because of decreased awareness, women are still less likely to seek medical help when they have symptoms.
There is no doubt that better education and awareness as well as more aggressive control of risk factors are desperately needed to tackle this potentially fatal disease.
This website has been supported by an educational grant from Cordis, a Johnson & Johnson company.
