Heart Disease in Women

Heart disease is the number one killer of women, yet heart disease in women in is harder to detect than heart disease in men. Also unfortunate is the fact that heart disease in women is harder to treat than heart disease in men. Each year heart disease heart disease kills more women than all cancers combined.

Part of reason that heart disease in women is so hard to detect is because the symptoms are likely to be ignored because they may seem like symptoms of other less dangerous problems. For example, a woman who is feeling dizziness or breathlessness in her everyday activities may assume that she is simply out of shape or not getting enough sleep. A woman with upper abdominal pain may think she has indigestion.

Heart disease in women can be missed by doctors even when the woman feels that something is wrong. A study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that heart disease in women is much harder to detect. One third of the women in the study who had heart problems did not show any signs of heart disease through an X-ray.

When a woman has a heart attack, she is more likely to die from it than a man. Each year cardiovascular disease kills 75,000 more women than men. A higher percentage of women will die within the first year after having a heart attack than will men. Not enough studies have taken place so far for scientists and doctors to know all they need to know about the difference in disease in men and women. What is known so far is that women are more likely to have microvascular disease than are men.

Microvascular disease is a uniform build up of plaque along the walls of the arteries. The problem with microvascular disease is that there is no mass that will appear on X-rays and because of that it too often goes undetected. It seems that women may also have plaque buildup on tiny coronary arteries that are too small to show up on an angiogram. It is imperative for women with the symptoms of heart disease to insist on finding a reason for their symptoms.